The desperadoes of the South-west

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SPLENDIDLY ILLUSTRATED.

DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST:

CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OP

THE CANE-HILL MURDERS.

TOGETHER WITH

THE LIVES OF SEVERAL OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS REG-
ULATORS AND MODERATORS OF THAT REGION.

*°*ON.sc

A Desperadoe of the Seuth-West to fill! co

BY CHARLES SUMMERFIELD,
OF TEX A 8.

NEW-YORK:

WM. H. GRAHAM: LONG AND BROTHER: BURGESS AND 8TRINGER.

1

DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST:

CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF

THE CANE-HILL MURDERS,

TOGETHER WITH

THE LIVES OF SEVERAL OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS REG¬
ULATORS AND MODERATORS OF THAT REGION.

Ncro-Dork:

WILLIAM H. GRAHAM, TRIBUNE BUILDINGS.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by
THEODORE FOSTER,

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York.

C/ 'JQjSP J

John R. M'Gow.v, Printer,
186 Fulton-street.

PREFACE.

The scenes presented in the following pages are not painted from
memory alone. They are not the acts of a fleeting drama, which passed
before my eyes, as an indifferent spectator merely. On the contrary, they
constitute a terrible tragedy of events, in many of which, I myself performed
a part. They are thus, not so much a record, as a resurrection,—the pale,
perished children of the heart come back again in the mournful moonlight
of memory. They are my experience, which is I.

But although these sheets are partly my autobiography, I have essayed
my uttermost to write them with the same candor, which the critic should
observe in their perusal. I have been compelled to relate deadly combats,
desperate duels, and bloody assassinations, the mere recollection of which
chills the blood in my veins, and excites an involuntary shudder of horror.
But I have endeavored also to trace their causes, in the hot, passionate
temperament of those chivalrous sons of the fiery south, and in the physical
and social circumstances of their special environment. I have not forborfie
even to express my sincere admiration for a high, heroic courage, which
although exerted in a cause not sufficiently worthy,—the cause of a con¬
ventional code of honor, may certainly dare a comparison with the proudest
achievements of ancient or modern story.

Certain cynical critics, I know, will condemn me for this ; yet they shall
hardly lash me into either repentance or disavowal, for surely we may
esteem death-defying heroism, were it even in the most abandoned pirates,
without approving the bloody deeds, in the perpetration of which, such
heroism was manifested.

I might have chosen a much more facile course ; and dealt in bitter
denunciations ; and whetted barbed satires dipped in gall; for it is much
easier to rail than to reason ; and the very lowest flight of genius is truc¬
ulent tirade.

But I could not make up my mind to do so, for I am a man myself, and
an erring one too; and neither an ascetic nor a fiend. I chronicle the deeds
of men ; and neither perfect good, nor perfect evil, appertains to human
nature, or any of its acts. Above all things, T have essayed to speak the
truth, both in relation to all matters of principle and detail, as they have
fallen under my own observation.

I know that some of the horrible rencounters here recorded, will seem
almost incredible, to persons unfamiliar with the private history of the section
of the Union, where they have transpired. Therefore to satisfy the most
sceptical, I have concluded to refer to several distinguished individuals who

rv

PREFACE.

are cognizant of the facts detailed ; and who will promptly respond to any
inquiries addressed them, by mail, on the subject.

Of the facts stated to have occurred in Texas, I present as witnesses,
Senators Rusk and Houston, and the Hon. David S. Kaufman, M. C., all
of Texas ; the Hon. Isaac Van Zandt, late minister to the court of St. James,
now resident at Marshall, Texas; and Mirabeau B. Lamar, ex-president
of the Republic of Texas, resident at Galveston.

As to to the bloody tragedy in the State House at Litde Rock, I offer
as witnesses, the names of Senators Sevier and Ashley, and Albert Pike,
the well-known and beautiful poet of Arkansas.

In proof of the rigid accuracy of my account of the Cane-Hill murders
and lynching, I need but name the Hon. George W. Paschal, late a judge
of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, resident at Van Buren, in that state;
Hon. David Walker, the candidate run on the Whig ticket in 1844, against
the lamented Gov. Yell, for Congress, now resident at Fayetteville, Arkan¬
sas ; and the Hon. Royal T. Wheeler, present judge of the Supreme Court of
the state of Texas, resident at Galveston ; and Brigadier General Arbuckle,
who at the period when those events occurred, was U. S. Commandant at
Fort Gibson, and was present at the execution of the five victims of lynch
law, as hereinafter related.

Should any person seek to be informed as to the character of the
Author of these pages, information can be obtained by applying to the
Hon. Thomas M. Woodruff, ex-member of Congress; William C. Bryant,
Horace Greeley, and Seba Smith, of the New York press.

New York, June 1847.

THE

DESPERADOES

OF THE

SOUTH-WEST,

CHAPTER I.

LYNCHING.

/ ITS CAUSES, AND PROGRESSIVE HISTORY.

The court of the lynchers has been migratory. It has followed the march of the
pioneer, slowly, yet surely, from the shores of the Atlantic to the wild base of the
Rocky mountains, everywhere, throughout the whole South and West. Its brief,
stern edicts have doomed men to death, in North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas, and lastly in Texas, where hecatombs have fallen
under its sentence. In fine, it is a great, gloomy fact, in the history of most new
settlements, in the southern and western division of the American Union.

Many persons, ignorant of its causes, have regarded the phenomenon of lynching
with surprise and wonder, and have made it the theme of unmitigated censure.
Some have concluded, too hastily, that it owes its origin solely to an undue
development of the destructive feelings,—an innate propensity and thirst foi blood;
and accordingly, they have denounced the new settlers, ‘ as a set of truculent
savages, utterly without the communion of civilization, whose creed is cruelty, and
whose sacrament is murder! ’

Most of those, who judge thus severely, are not only perfectly unacquainted
with the real causes of lynching, but also profoundly ignorant of the formal
proceedings in the courts of the lynchers. They suppose these assemblages to be
mere mobs, such as suddenly collect in large cities, acknowledging no principle
but passion, and no authority but revenge. They conceive only of a fierce
gathering of infuriate men, aroused to madness by some violent emotion, who
hang up their victims, with as little ceremony as the wild Indians, when they burn,
at deep midnight, the captive warrior of some hostile tribe.

Such a view is utterly incorrect. A company of lynchers have almost nothing
in common with a common mob. They ha% r e, so to speak, always, a written
constitution and organic law ; a committee of examination, who hear the evidence
against the culprit, under oath; deliberate, and pass sentence. They have
regularly elected officers, whose duty is not only to catch, but to hang. The
committee-men, or judges, are generally the most distinguished in the community,
for their age, wisdom, and virtues; often, ministers of the gospel, and therefore
presumed to be as well acquainted with the lav' of justice, as that of mercy.

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

When a deed of homicide, or other heinous outrage, has been perpetrated, the
company is hastily called together, by the captain, as he is 6tyled, the offence is
stated, and a most vigorous pursuit commenced. Perhaps the criminal has flown
for refuge to the wilderness of the mountains, or fled afar to some other State.
In that case, weeks, sometimes months, elapse before the search is successful.
Buf never let the poor wretch count himself secure. A few chosen emissaries
pertinaciously dog his trail, like Hood-hounds, from forest to forest, from State to
State; and rarely fail in bringing him back, at last, in chains.

Then the committee-men are called together. Some influential clergyman
often sits as president of that solemn council, appointed as avengers of Hood. They
commonly hold their sessions in some dense, dark grove, where the old oak-trees,
trellised with gray mosses, have prepared a cool retreat from the sun. Oaths are
administered to the witnesses, by some justice of the peace, or itinerant preacher.
The testimony is heard. Due deliberation is had; sentence solemnly passed, by
the president; and execution speedily follows. Then all hie away to their homes.

Now all this is evidently not the proceeding of a common mob.

Still, it must be confessed, that sometimes there are darker shades in the
picture. Horrors worse than death. When there has been a slow, cumulative
series of felonies committed, and the offenders have all managed to escape ; and
all at once, some new unheard of, hideous enormity falls on the public ear, appalling
as a peal of thunder,—such as the murder of women and children, or rape and
homicide combined,—a crime that would disgrace a fiend in hell! then, indeed, it
is fearful to behold the popular excitement. All the wild beast in human nature
b goaded, as it were, into a state of moral insanity. Reason reels on her throne,
and fiery vengeance assumes her sceptre. Passion boils like a mad, giddy
whirlpool. The memory of many other outrages, that escaped all punishment,
links itself to this, and deepens and darkens its colors of death. Often, then, are
even the innocent suspected. Men are dragged out of their beds, at the hour of
midnight, from the arms of their wives and embraces of their children, and hurried
away to the stern tribunal of the lynchers. Then, every body is looked on with
suspicion, unless he belongs to the company. All gamblers, idlers, and strangers
of mean aspect, in general, are taken up, and made to undergo a rigid examination,
with bowie knives gleaming in their faces, and the click of cocking pistols sounding
behind their backs! The usual maxim of law, “ that every man shall be presumed
innocent, until his guilt is proven,” is reversed ; and the lynchers require all
suspected persons to establish their freedom from guilt, by clear evidence of an
alibi, on the precise night of the murder !

Then, they revive the obsolete method of torture ! An dmen against whom
there is not one iota of proof, but suspicion the most vague, and often absurd, are
tied fast to a tree, and whipped with switches of the tough, knotty hickory, until
their bare backs are scarred all over with deep, red gashes, and the blood trickling
down beneath their heels, dyes the green grass with purple!

Wo, then, to the man who cannot prove an alibi ! Nothing can save him from
the lash. His own prayers for mercy are unheeded ; and the cries of his wife, and
the tears of his little children.

At last the committee-men believe that they have discovered the real murderer.
Some weak, pale wretch has yielded to the excruciating torture, and confessed.
Now for the hanging ! Be not too sure. “ Hanging,” they say, “ is too good for
him ! ” vVbat then 1 It is necessary to burn him ! They collect a large heap of
brush-wood. They fasten him with strong cords to the stake. A flaming torch is
applied. Soon the pile is in a bright red blaze, that soars up, and climbs crackling
and roaring around the poor victim, and licks his face, and hands, and lighted hair
with its scorching tongue of lurid fire! Let no pen attempt to paint his agony.
Let no living lip repeat the bitter curses he shrieks and howls out, while his mouth
is burning away to ashes !

This is no picture of fancy’s limning. The fact has occurred again and again,
in the South and West, and will occur yet again. Only a few years ago a Negro
was burned to death, near the city of St. Louis, by the mob. And it must be ac¬
knowledged, that it is generally only Negroes who are thus doomed to a death by

LYNCHING. 7

fire. White men are honored with a more elevated, if not romantic exit, on the
gallows, or limb of an ancient pine.

Now all this, we admit, is dreadful enough to think of, and may seem to war¬
rant some of the harsh epithets lavished by travellers —especially by Europeans—
on the perpetrators of such deeds. But we think that a calm and careful inquiry
into causes, will satisfy evory honest mind that such things are not the mere mani¬
festations of a brute propensity to shed blood, but the necessary result of a new
and altogether different social condition from any ever before witnessed in the
world. For if lynching be a phenomenon peculiar to the new settlements in the
South and West, we may rest assured that it springs out of some peculiarity in the
state of society in those new settlements. Nay, we might go farther, and since
human nature is everywhere essentially the same, in all the faculties and passions
of the soul, we might assert, confidently, that under the same circumstances we
would do what they have done—be lynchers too, if brought within the circle of
influences where the same causes are at work.

' To make this plain we have only to glance at the social condition of the South¬
western pioneers.

A few families, mostly poor laborers, select some rich valley in the forest, far
from the old settlements, as the site of their future residence. Thither they drive
their flocks, which are all their wealth, and haul their children in rude wagons.
There they erect them little huts, out of rough, round logs; and then commences
a battle with the toils of the wilderness. It requires the most arduous labors to
clear away the forests, and turn them into fields for future harvests. And these
labors have to be borne, under a total want, not alone of the luxuries of civilized
life, but nearly always of the bare necessaries of subsistence also, save what the
river and forest themselves supply—fish for the hook of the backwoods-boy, and
game for the hunter’s rifle. Often, in these wild, new settlements, have I stayed all
night, in my travels, with families who had been for weeks together without bread.
Often, after the toils of the day are over, the father must spend half the night in
fire-hunting, to procure venison for the mouths of his children ; the ensuing day
again to be passed in severe labor.

There is no Sabbath for the pioneer. That day he must chase the red-deer
from one mountain peak to another, in order to lay in a bounteous supply of meat
for the ensuing week.

He rises with the morning star, and is off from his hut away into the dew-drop¬
ping woods, eager-listening for the silvery chimes of his horse’s clear bell, ringing
afar on the still cool air. There is no corn in the crib, or fodder in the stable; for
as yet he has neither crib nor stable, and is therefore compelled to turn his steed
out at evening, all weary and worn as he is, to fill himself on grass, or the odorous
wild pea-vines, with their purple blooms, and thus renew his strength for the hard
work of another long summer’s day. And so the pioneer has to seek him out
every morning, and often must walk miles ere he finds “ poney,” who sometimes
proves a truant, and wanders with malicious perversity far off into the heart of
some deep cane-brake.

In these backwoods there are no mills, no provision-groceries, no storehouses;
and so the male part of the family is generally wholly clad in buckskin, often fan¬
tastically leaded with mock pearls of variegated" glass, of all the colors of the rain¬
bow, by the fond art of the wife, or sister, or some sun-tinted maiden, the soul’s
own “ true love,” dearer still.

Let us not despise these rough pioneers. Such were all our fathers. They
brave the arrow of the savage Indian, and the toil of the yet more savage woods,
and cruel hunger, savager still than all. Hidden from the eye of the world, the
heroism of many Napoleons beats in their wild, free hearts. Their keen axes
hack away the tangled branches of the wilderness, that we may afterwards rear
there our palaces of marble. They fell the oak and the giant-armed ash, that our
church-steeples may soar up there, with dazzling glitter, in the sunbeam. Our
cities rise above their graves : our banks are built upon their bones !

Wheu a new settlement has been once begun, it gradually, and often rapidly
increase'-, by fresh families of emigrants. At last the wealthy begin to move in.

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

The fiist valley broken up becomes a kind of nucleus around which other settle¬
ments are formed, farther and farther out in other vallies; while more remote still
some hardy hunter pitches his camp in yet deeper solitudes.

At this stage of progress no society can be more interesting. There are com-
paratwely few people, and therefore they are all friends. As yet there is no law,
and no need of law, for the fierce war of competition has not yet commenced—that
competition which has reduced the world to one great battle-field of opposing inter¬
ests, where friendship bleeds, and human sympathy is trampled under foot, and
the love of man to man dies out; and even holy virtue, with the many, becomes a
hollow sound, as of an echo from forgotten sepulches!

Then labor gives health. Luxury has not yet imported from effeminate towns
her cohort of old diseases, and there is therefore no dear doctor, with sleepy syrups,
and pills that poison while they cure.

There are then few debts, and they are all debts of honor, and therefore need
no coercion to secure a payment, that is prompted as much by an honest pride, as
by a sense of imperious duty.

There are then no quarrels; because there are no lawyers, whose very life
depends on the discord that breeds litigation.

There are no splendid churches, with mellow-toned organ, and choir of dulcet
voices, and golden-moutlied priest, with his manuscript of melodious words ! But
many a log cabin is a temple of humble prayer, where the simple itinerant preacher
draws, with cords of the heart, the rustic worshippers around him, and utters mild
sentences of mystic fervor, that melt, like music of heaven, on the soul.

Then, if you be a traveller, a stranger, every man you meet is a brother, and
every house you enter seems your own. The hunter receives you with pure,
though uupolished hospitality; presses you to stay all night; and should you stay a
week, or month, the tender of a remuneration would be the greatest insult you
could offer him. His children crowd around your knees with timid gladness ; the
face of his good wife beams with smiles, as if you were an angel visitant dropped
out of the skies.

One who has so often experienced their kindness may be pardoned for thus
alluding, in terms of so much enthusiasm, to the virtues of a simple-hearted peo¬
ple—virtues I have the sense to admire, if not the moral power to imitate.

Again I repeat it, at this stage of their progress the pioneers are the happiest
people on the earth. Spontaneous instinct serves them instead of philosophy; and
m place of metaphysical abstractions, old Mother Nature flings, free and full, into
their central souls, all her rich concretions—sun-pictures on the evening clouds, and
flashes of glory from rising and setting stars. For them the minstrel winds sing
hymns on every hill-top, and the little birds whistle sweet psalms from their leafy
boughs. To them all nature is a revelation, and the blue sheet of immensity spread
away above their heads, on high, is one leaf of God’s bible—a bible written with
fire-letters, by a flame-pencil, and dotted with suns that never go down !

Oh, ye thrice-happy green shades of the dim, distant backwoods! why can ye
not always remain thus—an oasis of love and friendship, and instructive virtue, in
the great world’s desert of barren sand—a happy exception in the universal hatred
—sole image of the innocence of Eden since the fall 1

Ah, me ! it is but a dream. It comes and goes, like the shadow of a bird’s wing
of a sunny day.

Soon refugees from justice, of other States, fly to those peaceful woods for an
asylum. They were once poor and happy. They have dug up wealth for them
selves and their children, out of the earth, God Almighty’s free bank, that asks nc
security on her issues but labor, and knows no panic, and never stops payment
Now the pioneers are comparatively rich, and State sovereignty is extended over
them; a judge is provided, and lawyers, and a sheriff goes round to assess and col¬
lect the taxes. ,

But as yet they have no jail and court-house, and the county-seat is perhaps a
hundred miles distant.

A different class of people now begin to settle among them—the aforesaid re¬
fugees : whiskered gamblers; land-speculators; and thieves in general. Small

LYNCHING.

9

groceries spring up thick as mushrooms in April. And now their camp-meetings,
that once came round one every year, so peacefully, and bringing so many happy
greetings of the hand and heart, are disturbed and broken up by the fierce revelry
of drunken riot, and the mad wafture of bowie-knives.

Scarcely a night passes without a horse being stolen. It is useless to pursue
him in the morning. At the rising of the sun the rogue is oft' forty miles in the
wilderness.

Next follows the perpetration of all the most loathsome crimes in the criminal
code—rape, robbery, and murder—in swift succession.

The offenders who do not escape are taken. They must be guarded ; for there
is no jail. The guard must be strong, as well as vigilant; for these villains are not
without their friends. To stand guard for six months is a great sacrifice, for men
whose living depends solely on the labor of their own hands. And six months it
must be, for the court sits only twice a year. But when court week comes, per¬
haps, as it generally happens, the judge does not come. Then the culprit must be
guarded six months longer.

At last, after one or two years, the court opens. The prisoner employs coun¬
sel ; and if it be a bad case, the counsel puts it off for lack of a witness, who never
yet has been born. Six months more elapse; the case is called, and the lawyer
finds a fatal flaw in the indictment, which is accordingly thrown out. Six months
more the criminal must be guarded ; a new indictment is found. Then the case
is again postponed for want of a material witness—one yet to be born.

At length, after three or four years, a trial is had, a verdict of guilty rendered,
and now you might suppose the murderer would hang. No such thing. In the
West an attorney never goes to trial on a good indictment. He quashes all the
good ones, and risks the fate of his client on one that he knows to be bad beyond
question. Accordingly, the judgment is arrested. And now judge, juries, and
prosecutors, heartily sick of the case, agree mutually that the prisoner be dis¬
charged. It is, one would think, high time to discharge him. He was as poor as
a beggar when arrested. He is now a gentleman of some considerable property.
He has made it playing poker with his guard. Then, after all other means of re¬
dress have been exhausted, the honest, hard-working portion of the community
organize themselves into a company of lynchers, elect a captain, appoint a com¬
mittee, and as they say, “ take justice into their own hands ! ”

Wo to the luckless lawyer who would hinder them. He may count on a coat
of feathers, without wings, and a jacket of tar, if not trowsers! For the back¬
woodsmen view the disciples of Blackstone as their worst foes, who rescue every
culprit from the clutches of justice. It is the lawyers who pick holes in every in¬
dictment. It is they who wheedle and mystify the judge. The arrival of a lawyer,
therefore, in a new settlement, is regarded as the most serious calamity—an evil
omen of coming misfortunes. And it must be confessed, he usually takes great
pains to justify their worst apprehensions, by raising the devil of litigation among
them at the earliest moment opportunity offers.

The company of lynchers once formed, they proceed to the execution of sum¬
mary justice. It is easy to conceive what sad work they must make of it, render¬
ed furious, as they have been, by multitudinous wrongs. And accordingly, they
whip, hang, torture, burn, flay alive; and however they may begin, end at last by
acting like a band of savages.

What else could be expected of such men, however honest, however merciful,
stung to ungovernable rage by so many injuries, and now placed as judges in their
own case, in a position beyond responsibility I

By and by, the more cunning rogues take shelter under their protection, and
bawl out the loudest for justice. Then the fruit of ruin is ripe. Men accuse their
enemies of the most appalling crimes, in order to glut feelings of private revenge.
A hypocritical zeal for honesty becomes the cloak of rapine and murder. Ven¬
geance supplants law, and brute force and fury trample down all show of order.
fTovemment ceases, and every infernal passion stalks abroad at will, to prey on
the bosom of society. No lion of the Lybian desert was ever half so pitiles^ as the
mob, in a period of excitement. The rage of one man is fearfully revolting to the

, ****®S

10

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

eyes of a calm spectator; but it is no more to be compared to the fury of several
thousands, than a dim spark is to be likened to the glare of a burning city.

But the force is never wholly on one side only. The lynchers, or “ regulaters,”
as they are often called, soon find that their foes organize also; arm themselves,
and prepare for systematic resistance, under the denomination of “ moderators.”
Then commences a guerilla warfare as dark and deadly in its hate, as the
old English contest between the Red and White Roses. It is a war of utter
extermination. For one party or the other must be either annihilated, or exiled
the country. Sometimes' the moderators only make a show of fight, and then
ingloriously fly, before the firing of a rifle. But oftener, bloody combats take
place, in which many are slain on both sides. Such an engagement occurred,
about two years ago, in Shelby county, Texas,—the same where forty persons
were lately poisoned, at a wedding supper. The fight, which was then and there
waged, was of a most dreadful character. Both companies, under their respective
leaders, displayed that reckless daring that is so peculiar a characteristic of the
Texans. There were about three hundred on each side. And for two hours
together a destructive fire was kept up, from double-barrel guns, rifles, and
revolving pistols; while repeated charges were made with bayonets, as well as
bowie knives, and the fatal two-edged Mexican sword ! At length the moderators
gave way, not in a total rout, but a regular retreat. They fled, but, like wounded
lions, still fought as they fled, disputing every inch of ground e’er they relinquished
•ts defence. Every standing oak was converted into the pivot of a new position,
and every fallen pine-tree into a breast-work, mantled with wreaths of smoke and
jets of sudden flame. Every ravine, on the line of the retreat, became a ditch,
where brave men paused again to hurl back death in the faces of their pursuers.
Many a tuft of wild grass was turned to crimson-red, and many a clear rill tinged
with gore. Till finally the moderators were literally pushed, as by main strength,
into a dense cane-brake, impervious almost to the blade of a sword, where their
foes dared not follow !

After the foregoing narration, every one must perceive, at a glance, that
lynching, as a fact, however anomalous in its character, is a necessary result of
a new and singular train of causes, in the social condition of pioneer settlements.
It is not a product of any peculiar savage or cruel propensity, but is merely a
dernier resort, when all other expedients have failed to clear the community of
villains and vagabonds.

Still, as an eye-witness, I must be permitted, as an honest recorder of events,
to express a doubt as to any lasting or substantial benefit, that might be supposed
to flow from its practice; while its evil effect on those who participate in its scenes
of bloodshed, are beyond all dispute

After one hanging, or burning, or even a case of extreme whipping and torture,
there always occurs, in a short time, a revulsion in the public feeling, a mournful,
half-suppressed sentimeut of sorrow for the victims; a sad, sickening regret, as
if the memory of a murder were haunting the conscience of the people. This
emotion is peculiar to the humane and better portion of the citizens, who can never
he excited to do such deeds again.

But the influence of such scenes is very different on another and more numerous
class—the men who are naturally the most destructive in their organization and
habits of life. It is a most perilous thing for such men to get a taste of homicide.
It unchains all the tiger in their nature. They have slain, from a sense of duty.
They will soon seek to slay, from the passion for blood. They have grown
quarrelsome, vindictive, and overbearing, in an almost inconceivably short space
of time; nay, often worse than the knaves whom they have aided to expel. And
so, while society has rid itself of the thieves, it has gotten a set of murderers in
their stead; or rather, its own members have partly turned murderers, in their
remedial strife with the rogues. This has taught me, as all things ever teach, that
it is better to eudure evil than to seek its cure in other wrongs; and that no end
proposed, even as a matter of naked policy, can ever justify means which are, in
their essence, sinful. Necessity is a void plea in the high courts of both providence
and virtue, when one is called on to answer for a positive crime.

CHAPTER II.

THE CANE-HILL MURDERS.

The Ozark Mountains is a range that rises in the south-west Missouri, near the
Osage river, and after sweeping far round through central Arkansas, in an irregu¬
lar course, terminates in the heart of the Cherokee country.

In this mountain chain, there is some of the finest wild scenery that ever
greeted my eyes. It is covered all over with mazy forests, the haunt of innumer¬
able wild animals. Deer, in great herds graze in its steep-down grassy dells, so
well sheltered from the nothern, icy winds, that they are partially green even in
mid-winter. Armies of wolves wander about in search of prey, filling the ear of
night with dismal howlings. And the panther, and the wild cat, with glittering
eyes, lurk among the le.afy branches of many an old oak ( tree, ready to pounce
upon a passing victim. While in the deep, savage caverns, bored by unknown
causes, in the base of almost every hill, the black bear finds a congenial home for
her cubs, whose wailing cry reminds the traveller in those solitudes, of the laments
tion of a child for the absence of its mother.

The chain is broken in many places— disjointed, so to speak, by beautiful vallies
that intervene betwixt the ribs of the mountains—vallies where infant rivers wan¬
der, seen from the distant heights like mazy threads of silver, wrought in
serpentine semi-coils, on a mantle of living green.

There every lofty summit has its spring of purest water, whence rills flow

12

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

away with murmurous farewells, to meet and mingle with sister rills from neigh¬
boring peaks; and thus swell into roaring torrents, that leap from cliff to cliff, in
cascades whose face is snowy foam, and whose voice is heard afar, like the roll of
distant thunder.

The geological structure of this range is various. In some parts, the ledges
of old strata that jut horizontally out of the steep hill sides, are of sand-stone tinged
red as blood, with oxyde of iron. Other sections are composed almost wholly of
a conglomerate of water-worn pebbles, agglu inated firmly by a calcareous cement.
In other places again the abrupt mountains shoot up on high in mural, perpendic¬
ular precipices of deep blue limestone, as blue and almost as beautiful as the
azure sky, that seems, to one in the low valley, to rest on those lofty peaks, as
pillars of support to the dome of heaven.

In general, this is a region of wilderness. Though some of the wider vallies
are inhabited now by a race as hardy as the neighboring rocks; while in places
more remote, few and far between, the single huts of hunters are seen, in a bound
less contiguity of wilderness.

But there is no where a single spot in this range of mountains, half so
beautiful as “ Cane-Hill,”—the site of scenery absolutely romantic.

Cane-Hill as it is called, is a round mountain, or rather brotherhood of high
hills, that rise in the western part of the Ozark chain, in Washington county,
Arkansas, near the Cherokee Nation of Indians. But although Cane-Hill is a
member of the Ozark family of mountains, he exists in a state of singular
separation from his other brethren, being everywhere surrounded by a broad belt
of rich alluvial prairie that runs in a wide, deep valley, several miles in extent,
like a trench dug around his base. That base is as round as a circle, and is about
twenty miles in circumference.

Cane-Hill received its name from a circumstance as remarkable as its own
anomalous character and appearance among mountains.

The wild cane, as is generally known, is confined almost entirely to the rich
bottoms on the banks of rivers in the south-west, often spreading in thick-clustered
luxuriance over areas embracing thousands and millions of acres. These bottoms
are denominated “ Cane-brakes,” and are the most fertile lands in the world. The
soil is always a loam of the richest alluvion, black as tar, and loose and light as a
heap of manure. Those cane-brake bottoms are the coffers, where the rivers, at
flood time, deposite and hoard their wealth of decayed vegetation, washed down
by the rains, from a thousand mountains. The deposite is often twenty feet deep.
No other country on the earth can boast such banks of riches. One of these
bottoms, “ Old Caney,” not far from the Colorado, in Texas, is a continuous cane-
brake, seventy miles long, and twenty wide, and richer than the famous valley of
the Nile.

But these cane-brakes hardly ever extend to the uplands. To this rule, Cane-
Hill is a singular exception. When first discovered, it was litera'y matted and
tangled all over, up to its highest peak, with long green cne. And its soil
corresponding in character to the alluvial bottoms of the great rivers, was as rich as
a garden-bed. Since it was settled, the cane has been gradually eaten out by the
herds of cattle, until only a few green tufts are seen waving here and there in the
wind, over the brows of inaccessible precipices.

I have remarked that Cane-Hill was in itself not so much one, as a brother¬
hood of fertile mountains, united into one family. These are generally regular
sloping cones, truncated at the top. Between them gurgle rills of the purest water
I ever beheld, cold as ice, and clear as crystal. Fountains innumerable bubble
up every few hundred yards, on the slant hill sides. It ought to be called “ the
Mountain of many Springsand not “ Cane-Hill ” any longer. For its beautiful
web of cane is worn out, but its living springs will last forever.

As you descend towards the belt of prairie, that everywhere lies around
the mountains, the declivity becomes more and more precipitous, till at length
it ends in a perpendicular wall, cften several hundred feet in height. So that the
plateau of the hills can only be approached in a few places, by safe and certain roads,
and these must wind like serpents, far round among the rocks of blue lime-stone/

THE CANE-HILL MURDERS.

13

Nature appears, from its structure, in the almost impassable barriers she lias
erected around it, to have designed this site for the position of a great fortress,
where the Hag of Freedom might take refuge in a deadly struggle against the
coalesced tyrannies of the world.

And indeed, when examined by the critical eye of the Antiquarian, some such
nso appears to have been made of its natural strength in long forgotten ages,
whose extinguished traditions have not sent down to th o present ono dim-twinkling
ray of intelligence.

For on the summit of one of the loftiest cones, there is found the remains of
an old wall, compacted of solid limestone, near eight feet in height, and in the
form of a regular ellipsis. This wall encloses an area of about one hundred acres,
in which are a number of beautiful springs. Ono may form some faint conception, of
the remote antiquity, when this wall must have been built, when the fact is stated that
with a few exceptions, it is at present under the soil, which has gradually accumu¬
lated over it in a long series of years, which haffle even the grasp of imagination.
The wall is everywhere, when we dig down to its base founded on the naked
blue limestone, which underlies the alluvion of the whole mountain. Consequently
it must have been erected when there was not a tree or shrub, and perhaps not one
blade of grass or handful of earth’s dust on all Cane-Hill. And all this—all the beds
and hanks of fat loam—all the flourishing forests, have been the slow growth of
innumerable silent yearn, by the mere deposition of vegetable matter alone—a
matter not brought thither by the action of foreign forces from a distance, but made
there on the very spot, by the instinctive process of vegetable life.

When one remembers how slow must ever be the formation of such deposits
on hare rocks, and what an immense interval of time must separate between the
birth of a bundle of gray mosses and that of the mountain ash—millions of years
are but as moments in the mind’s eye—and we are forced to the conclusion that
such must have elapsed since those blocks of limestone were laid on one another,
by the hands of a race perhaps extinct for ages, when the corner-stone of the chief
Egyptian pyramid was placed by the armies of the first Pharaoh !

At the period when our tragedy of murder opens, some seven years ago, Cane-
Hill had been reclaimed from the forest, and was converted into fruitful fields,
affording the means of subsistence to more than one hundred families. Washing¬
ton county (within whose limits it was included) was the most populous in the
State of Arkansas, and bordered immediately on the Indian line. From this fact
it was infested by a gang of thieves and desperadoes, whose very lives were an
outrage to humanity, and whose best acts, in civilized lands, would be regarded
as crimes.

Runaways from every State in the Union were collected along the Cherokee
line, and preyed alike upon the whites and the Indians. For the especial benefit of
these desperadoes, as it would seem, groceries were erected immediately on the
line—one-half the house being in Washington county and the other in the Chero¬
kee nation ; so that, when a crime was committed in one part of the grocery, the
offender had but to step across a plank in the floor, and lo ! he was in another ju¬
risdiction, beyond the reach of legal process issued by a court on the side he had
left.

The year 1840 might not inappropriately be called the year of murders, both
among the whites and Indians in the South-west. The rival parties of Ross and
Ridge, among the Cherokees, were in a state of open war, which yet was not so
deadly as that secret assassination, which robed some of the best families in mourn¬
ing, and filled all souls with alarm. On the night of the twentieth of June of that
year, if I mistake not, all the leaders of the Ridge party were slain—butchered
basely, in cold blood, by the hired bravoesof John Ross, the rival chieftain. Then
fell the amiable Boudinot, a man of eminent learning and virtue, and R. Ridge,
an aged chieftain, who fought beneath the banner of Gen. Jackson at the battle of
the Horse-shoe, and did equal credit to himself and service to the American army.
While the uext morning, at the dawn of day, John Ridge, the orator of the Chero¬
kees—the most eloquent man, perhaps, this country ever produced—was dragged
out of hie bed, and murdered in the presence of his wife and children— pierced with

14

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SODTH-WEST.

a dozen daggers! Many others, of less note, were slaughtered in the same merci¬
less manuer.

Always when a high degree of agitation happens to occur among the Indians,
then may the pioneers expect the committing of the darkest crimes on their own
side of the line also. For then, secret assassins have learned by experience, it is
easy to cast suspicion on their copper-colored neighbors.

Accordingly, after the butchery of the Ridges a war succeeded in the Chero¬
kee tribe, that threatened to depopulate the whole country; and contemporane¬
ously, in the border counties of Arkansas, a succession of horrible homicides were
perpetrated, so numerous, so aggravated, that the like were never known before,
in any clime under the sun.

There seemed to be let loose among men some infernal demon, whose sole
appetite was to shed human blood. Travellers were slain on the highway, their
purses rifled, their bodies hideously mutilated, and left by the road-side to be pick¬
ed by the buzzards and wolves. Every night, in almost every neighborhood, some
horse was stolen, house robbed, or family assassinated.

Numerous culprits were arrested, tried, and acquitted, according to law; for
the attorneys were in league with murder ; and no indictment could be made to
stick; and even to write a subpoena, in proper form, appeared an impossibility. In
every case either a plural noun was used instead of a singular, or a verb was writ¬
ten in a wrong tense, or a short-tailed S was set in the middle of a word instead of
a long-tailed one.

This state of things had continued until justice had become a misnomer, and the
word law seemed a frightful mockery! In the meantime assassinations by no
means diminished. The excitement grew into madness. A company of lynchers
were raised, amounting to four hundred men, and a regular committee of thirty
was organized, under a constitution as eloquent in its declaration of rights, and as
precise in its definition of specific lynching powers, as the Constitution of the
American Union in its enumeration of the separate elements of federal jurisdiction.

We may be permitted to pause for a more particular survey of this" Cane-
Hill Company,” as it was called. It was composed mostly of laboring men, old
settlers and honest, who had worked themselves out comfortable homes, in that
once gloomy wilderness.

On Cane-Hill and in its vicinity, at that period, were schools, churches, and in
general a highly moral and religious population. Such was the substratum of so¬
ciety ; but floating around and above these was the light, filthy scum of gamblers,
grocery-keepers, and bravoes, to whom we have previously alluded.

The lynching company was organized of the best materials of the county; for
everywhere the laborer is the best materiel in the world. The captain elected was
Mark Bean, a man of great wealth, part of which he had made by working at the
blacksmith’s trade among the western Indians, twenty years ago; but the greater
portion he had amassed by contracts with the U. S. Government, to supply beef to
the various hordes of successive emigrant tribes, transplanted in accordance with
Gen. Jackson’s policy from the regions east of the Mississippi. Captain Bean was
a man of slight frame, but active and energetic as a Western wild-cat. His calm¬
ness was imperturbable; but his courage was also obstinate—unyielding as iron.
His face was pale, fine-featured, and gentle, even beautiful as a woman’s ; and his
self-command was so great, that his placid countenance never betrayed any symp¬
tom of excitement, when his bosom was boiling with furious passion, save in a
fierce redness around the white of his little, snake-like, sky-blue eye, and a quick
convulsive twitching of his thin lips, as if they were quivering beneath the shocks
of electricity like those of a galvanized corpse. His courage was only equalled by
his cunning. Slow, wary, and circumspect in deliberation, in deed he was prompt
as a flash of lightning. His words were few, and always to the purpose. I have
heard him demolish a long flatulent speech of inane theory with three sentences of
sober fact. No man in America was better fitted to be the captain of a company
of lynchers. And so he was the very life and soul of the Cane-Hill organization,
and the most influential member of the committee of thirty, as well as the general
commandant of the whole corps-

THE CANE-HILL MURDERS.

15

The committee of thirty was composed mostly of ministers of the gospel, col¬
lected from all parts of the country; though several were justices of the peace, and
some were Methodist class-leaders. Only a few of these are worth describing.

The president of the committee was the Rev. Samuel Harris, a Cumberland
Presbyterian preacher, with a bull-neck, a brow of brass, a sensual mouth, whence,
on Sundays, proceeded a silvery voice, the sweetest to which I ever listened. His
sermons were models of western eloquence—not that eloquence which is so
often caricatured in the public prints—but that exquisite mingling of deep, wild
pathos, and rude, oriental imagery, which can captivate unsophisticated, forest-born
hearts, and lead them whithersoever the orator will. His precepts were evangelical,
according to the straitest sect of orthodoxy. But it was his misfortune, that in
that doomed conflict, which every spirit must wage against the flesh, although the
former is strong, and the latter weak, yet in his case the weak very often triumphed,
thus exemplifying, in a new sense, the proverb—“ the battle is not always in favor
of the strong! ”

The story of his conversion had a spice of the romantic, if not of the
miraculous. In his youth he had been a traveling gambler, and notorious
desperado. As frequently happens to those knight-errant gentry, he was often
flat, as they word it in cant phraseology, and had to draw largely on his wits, in
order to obtain the needful supplies. When this happened among strangers, he
had always one ready resource. He passed himself off as an itinerant preacher,
of the Lorenzo Dow species, and delivered flaming discourses, most edifying to
the simple-hearted brethren of the backwoods.

On a certain occasion, he resorted to this novel expedient, in a case of emer¬
gency, in Western Tennessee. His eloquence, so unlike the dronish snuffle
common to the region, had a powerful influence, and a stirring revival was the
consequence. This affected the gamester-priest, to such an extent that he became
converted under his own preaching, made a public profession of religion, and was
shortly afterwards ordained a minister of the gospel.

Another leading member of the committee was the Rev. A. Buchanan, familiarly
known by the soubriquet of “ Uncle Buck.” He was a huge mass of obesity, fat
all over, even to the very eyes. His voice was hoarse, as a bull-frog’s in the
Mississippi swamp. His stomach was unique in its shape, and monstrous in its
proportions. Not being at all acquainted with the man in his “ natural state,” as
he termed the life previous to his conversion, I cannot affirm, or deny, whe'ther he
was originally cruel. However this may be, his creed of ultra-Calvinism had long
ago made him so. He fixed his eye with so steady a stare on the stern features
of the law, that he forgot the milder, angel-face of the gospel: and so in his
personal character as a preacher verified the fine saying of Bui'ke—“ By hating
sin too much, we often come to love the sinner too little.” He was the most
truculent member, by far, that sat on the Cane-Hill committee.

Another influential member of the committee, was the Rev. Benjamin Pierson.
He was a man of good moral character—a very good sort of person ; had been,
perhaps, at first, a being of benevolent instincts. But the whole nature of the man
was now soured into ascetic verjuice, by a stringent metaphysical belief, that gave
to evil an everlasting and equal share on the throne of the universe; and fettered
even the hands of the omnipotent Deity himself, with the fixed necessity of an
unalterable predestination. Such a man, one who believed that mercy for the evil
doers was a sentiment unknown in Heaven, was very likely to make a severe judge
on the earth ; and accordingly, in all the proceedings of the committee, he was
unrelenting in his feelings, and savage in all the measures of punishment he advised.

And still another of those reverend worthies, was the Methodist parson, Thomas
Norwood. I cannot speak of this individual with that charity due to every membei
of the great brotherhood of the race, and, therefore, will not speak of him at all.
In truth, I can ouly judge of him through the distorted medium of a settled
antipathy, which I experienced, like a sudden thrill of dread and nameless horror,
the very first time I found myself in his presence. It is enough to say, that he
never suffered any emotions of gentle pity to disturb the sternness of his opposition
to the unconformables of the social state !

16

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

It is no difficult matter to conceive what sad work would be made with such
tools, at a period of violent excitement, when every heart was an organ of fire.
Nor was there long wanting an opportunity to try their hands.

About the last of June, in “the year of murders,” 1840, a Mrs. Crawford,
while heating cruelly one of her slaves, a slight mulatto girl of fifteen, carried her
correction to such an extreme, that the irritated girl, maddened by the pain and
disgrace, snatched up an axe, felled her mistress to the earth at a blow, and coolly
chopped off her head. She then went to the next neighbor’s house, informed the
family what she had done, and detailed her reasons therefor.

She was immediately arrested and put in chains; the company of lynchers
collected, and the reverend committee were called together. Sentence of death
was hastily passed without opposition, and an early day appointed for the execution

When the day arrived, thousands, white, black, and red, assembled to witness
the revolting sight. The execution took place in a shady grove, on the summit
of one of the many green-browed coves of Cane-Hill. The gallows was the limb
of a large oak tree, perhaps five hundred years old.

I was an eye-witness. An incident occurred, not more than a minute before
the final consummation of the scene, that filled me with horror, aud I cannot
recollect it now without an internal shudder. The day was excessively hot, for
even that climate. The sweat rolled in great drops down the cheeks of the poor
yellow girl, sweat mingled, alas! with bitter, burning tears !

They compelled her to kneel down on the scaffold; the Rev. Andy Buchanan
bowed also, and offered up a solemn prayer to equal God! to which many in the
vast assembly responded in a hearty backwoods “ Amen,” which is always repeated
aloud. The parson arose from his knees. The scene was about to close. One
moment more, and that friendless child would be off to eternity, a denizen of the
unknown darkness. Expectation was on tip-toe. Men climbed up on fallen logs,
women on the limestone rocks, and urchins peeped down from the leafy branches
of surrounding trees, in order to see ! Children cried to see ! and mothers held
them high in their arms to see! That slight girl had not yet uttered a word.
But lo ! now her lip quivers pale. Hush! she is going to speak. The murmur
of the crowd dies away to a whisper, all hunger to hear. Will she plead for
mercy 1 mercy, the last prayer of the wretched , when hope is departed ] No.
For she knows there is no pity for her there. Still she begs—“Uncle Buck, for
Christ’s sake, let me have one more drink of water, before I die ? ” And what
answer did the “ called and sent" minister of Jesus make to the petition of the
dying 1 A beautiful rill was singing its silver song not ten feet from the foot of
the gallows-tree, but he heard it not, heeded it not.

He only replied in his hoarse, harsh, guttural snuffle, “ It is not worth while
you will soon be wh jre you will not want water any more! ”

Three seconds more—and the body of poor “ Lucy” was suspended, writhing,
six feet from the earth, choking for breath, in God’s boundless air.

Her last words were, “ farewell mother, farewell, farewell.” Then the signal
was given—the fearful leap was made. The sky overhead remained blue and
bright as ever, enamelled with ribbons of snow-white cloud ; and the sun still shone
with not a beam bedimmed. But for her, all was night.

They cut her down, and buried her at the root of the tree on which she was
banged. There 6he still sleeps. And never more shall the bugle of the pitiless
overseer, at the rise of the morning star, awake her to the dreary toil of the long
summer’s day.

God be praised that a place of rest is found at last, for earth’s heavy-laden
ones—even in that house of death, where “ the slave is free from his master.”
One little leap lands us on a shore, where the oppressor can never find us.

As I mused thus mournfully, by that terrible gallows-tree, I fell in love with
“easeful death,” ar.d passed away from that pitiless crowd, in tears, murmuring
to myself, “ gentle death, thou art the giver of hope to those whose life is despair :
happy grave— the cradle of the dreamless slumber, which the sound of chains
cannot break—nor the whip-lash, nor any cruel wrong can alarm with a sudden
fear, any more, again, forever.

THE CANE-HILL MURDERS.

17

It was now generally supposed that the tenor of such an example, would
effectually check the progress of bloodshed. Vain hope! For in this, as in most
other cases, where the solemnities of the law lend their sanction—one execution
was followed by a dozen new murders. The feeling of destructiveness is not to be
allayed by destruction. The Tiger, in human nature is not to be tamed by the sight
of other tigers torn in pieces.

To melt down revenge into true tenderness, one tear of mercy is more effectual
than whole seas of blood !

About one week after the execution of “ Lucy,” the mulatto girl, another
murder was committed on Cane-Hill, and within one mile of the spot where she
was buried, under circumstances of horrifying atrocity, such as the whole history
of assassination can hardly parallel.

On Cane-Hill lived a man, by the name of Wright, a hard-working, honest
citizen—old settler; one of the first who had penetrated the cane-forest, fifteen
years previously ; and who, as well by frugal economy, as long-continued industry,
had amassed a considerable sum of ready money. He was a married man, had an
amiable wife, and half a dozen pretty little children.

One night after a day of hard labor in his corn-field, he retired to rest sometime
betwixt eight and nine o’clock. The children were already asleep, but the wife
had not lain down.

As the clock struck nine, she heard the large gate open, some fifty yards west
of the house, and looking out through a crevice in the cabin logs, saw three men
approaching. The new moon, about to set, shone dimly among the trees, not
affording sufficient light to enable her to recognize who they were.

The house was a “ double-cabin,” as they term it in the west, consisting of
two rooms, or rather pens, with a partition of logs, and a door-way between them.
The three men knocked at the door several times without speaking. A sudden
pang of fear and suspicion shot across the mind of Mrs. Wright, and she glided
into the back room, where, concealed in the darkness, she could observe all that
tMtnspired. She saw her husband arise and open the door, and at the instant, the
glittering blades of three bowie knives gleamed like lightning in the pale moon¬
shine, and were plunged, swift as thought into his bosom. With a single groan,
he fell dead on the floor.

The wife saw no more, but fled out at the back door, and made her escape to
the nearest neighbors, distant about one mile.

The assassins then proceeded to murder the innocent children. Two little
sisters were sleeping in one bed, interlocked in each other’s arms. These they
shot dead, and then horribly mangled with their daggers. At this moment, a boy
of twelve years old, and a girl of ten, aroused by the report of the pistols, sprung
on the floor and endeavored to escape. The girl succeeded. She darted out at
the door so suddenly, that they failed to arrest her flight, and the thrust of a bowie
knife, by one of the demons in human shape, aimed at her bosom, fortunately did
not take effect.

The fate of the boy was less favorable. He was laid senseless on the floor, by
a heavy blow from the cock of a pistol, which fractured the skull, and deprived
him of reason the remainder of his life. The murderers then rifled the house, set
it on fire, and hurried away.

Two little boys, one of about eight, and the other six years of age, were sleep¬
ing in a truckle-bed under their father’s, and had not been noticed by the assassins.
These children, who had slept soundly notwithstanding the firing of the pistols,
were now awoke by the roaring of the flames consuming the house above their
beads.

As they rushed out at the door, they perceived their eldest brother lying, as we
have seen, all unconscious on the floor, in a pool of his own blood. And then was
seen the strength of a child’s affection, and the wonderful presence of mind which
that affection can often confer, amidst scenes of danger and death. The whole
bouse was in a bright blaze, hideously crackling. The burning brands of boards
and rafters were already falling down on the smoking floor. The two children
bad just aiisen from their bed in a fit of consternation and terror, and were in a
2

18

THE DESPERADOES OP THE SOUTH-WEST.

manner naked, having no clothing around them hut their short night-shirts, in which
they were accustomed to sleep. But notwithstanding this, and all the horror and
danger of their own situation, their love for their wounded brother triumphed over
the fear of death. They caught him by the arms, and with their united strength,
after a severe effort, succeeded in dragging him out of the midst of the flames.

Here they were soon joined by their little sister, who was hidden in some thick
weeds close by, and they all, still in a state of the most dreadful alarm, sought
shelter and concealment in a dense bower of wild vines, some fifty paces from the
cabin.

About midnight a large crowd was collected around the appalling scene of
slaughter. The house was burned down into one red heap of live coals, where,
amidst the lurid light, the bodies of the father and his children were seen, parched,
and fried, and blackening—hideous vision!

All night long that horror-stricken crowd remained there, gazing wildly on the
smoking ember-heap of death—remained till the live coals should die out, and the
hot ashes cool, that they might pick up and bury the white bones!

It was supposed that all had perished. But the next morning, as the sun arose,
bright and beautiful as ever, as if there were neither death, nor tears, nor breaking
hearts anywhere, in all the circuit of his wandering beams, the little children, who
had made their almost miraculous escape, peeping from the green cover of the
adjacent vines, discovered and knew their mother, and rushed with wild cries of
joy into her arms. Then throughout the whole mass of assembled spectators every
eye melted, and every heart bounded high; and many of the women actually
screamed with delight!

The shock of blessed surprise was too much for the stricken mother. All night
long, pale as the statue of grief, silent, absorbed, seemingly unconscious, she had
stood, gazing motionless on that awful burning house of death—the funeral pile of
all her hopes. Not a word had escaped her lips, white and fixed as those of a
corpse! But now, when the little children, with streaming eyes, leaped on the
bosom of the mother, her preternatural firmness gave way; she uttered one long
shriek, as if her heart-strings were being snapped asunder, and sunk down on the
ground in a swoon.

Hundreds, soon thousands, were assembled. Before noon of that day the com¬
mittee of thirty and the Cane-Hill company were arrived, all, to a man. They
had gathered with their rifles, and many bore on their shoulders muskets from the
U. S. arsenal at Fayetteville—muskets with their bright bayonets fixed and glitter¬
ing in the sunbeams. Preachers of Jesus came, with belted pistols at their waists
and bowie-knives fastened in their bosoms, whose white handles were not con
cealed.

The excitement was indescribable; for the spectacle was enough to madden
even saints. Some swore fierce oaths; others muttered imprecations and curses of
doomed death. Faces of crimson health were pale with suppressed passion, and
the white cheek of the invalid reddened with the fires of revenge.

At last, on a motion from Captain Bean, who had remained calm, and seeming¬
ly cold as the rock at his feet, while all other souls were in a flame, a solemn vow
was made, which Almighty God was invoked to witness—a covenant vow, by all
present, “ that they would never give over the search until the murderers were dis¬
covered and the foul deed avenged! ” The sitting of the committee of thirty was
declared permanent.

Let us pause a moment to survey, with some degree of minuteness, its hall nj
justice.

There is a beautiful little cone of a peak near the centre of the Cane-Hill
group. With the exception of its western slope, its declivities, a little way down,
are steep, wall-like precipices—in the phrase of the country called “jumping-off
places ”—and therefore almost inaccessible. The western side of the cone has a
more gradual descent, and its western base is washed by one of those rills of lim¬
pid crystal, which we have before described as peculiar to that geological section.
The whole area of the cone embraces not more than fifty acres. It is unfit for
cultivation, on account of the numerous ledges of fine blue limestone that every-

THE VICTIMS.

19

where, shoot in disrupted masses above the surface of the earth. It is, however,
covered with a deep, dense forest of trees—oaks, walnuts, sugar-trees, and the
moun.'ain ash—all of gigantic size; and the soil is spread with a mantle of pea-
vine, green as emerald and fine as silk, wrought all over with a rich flowering, by
Nature’s own fairy fingers, of wild blossoms of every hue, crimson and gold, and
stainless white—as if one limb of a rainbow had there rested on the hill, and tinged
all its blooms in the colors of heaven. And there, beneath a mighty oak, monarch
of the forest, the committee of thirty organized their court. Sentinels were sta¬
tioned, at suitable distances, around the cone, and in particular, a chosen band of
twelve—men of known and desperate daring—guarded the rill that ran at the foot
of the western declivity; for near that rill, in full view of the peak, stood the little
village of “ Boonsborough,” through which the main road from Missouri to Texas
passed—a road then thronged with emigrants for the South.

The first act of the committee marked the height of desperation to which the
excitement had risen. They passed a resolution that every man in the community
should prove, by other testimony than his own, his precise “whereabout” on the
fatal night of the murder. That was placing every man’s life at the mercy of
chance, to establish a precarious alibi! And to show that they were resolved to
carry out the rule of evidence to its extreme consequences, with the utmost rigor,
every member of the committee and company, at the outset, was required, and
actually succeeded in substantiating the marvellous alibi.

Then opened a scene as unique as it was ludicrous. Scores were arrested in
as many hours, and called upon to prove their innocence. But as the testimony of
wives, daughters, and sisters was received, ex necessitate rei, acquittal followed
almost as rapidly as arrest. It would have been laughable, had it not been horri¬
ble, in the peril of the whole procedure, to see the farmer brought, all dusty from
his cornfield, before the inexorable committee, and strictly examined, under a spat¬
tering fire of cross-questions. And then behold his affrighted wife, with her baby
on her bosom, come forward and swear to the miraculous alibi, without which there
was no salvation!

The committee might justly boast of one superiority—an incidental advantage
resulting from its new method,—that never before was so much beauty in attend¬
ance on any court, as witnesses, within the historical memory of the species.
Graceful sisters were witnesses for their brothers. And love-smitten maidens,
with eyes of languid light, and cheeks blushing like red roses, came forward shak¬
ing their clustering ringlets, as they tripped like wood-nymphs over the sparkling
flowers—to swear the mystic alibi for their sweet-hearts, since no one knew so
well where the dear youths were, on the perilous night!!

CHAPTER III.

THE VICTIMS.

Hundreds had proven themselves clear. And it began to be doubted whether
even the rule of blood-hound alibi would be able to scent out its prey.

Vengeance became impatient of the long delay, and the more fiery spirits be
gan to talk of torture, as a necessary expedient to wrench out of the guilty soul,
its dark secret.

At length five men were arrested, whom the committee appeared to regard
with unmixed suspicion; for no other reason, that I could discover, than their
refusal from the first, to unite themselves with the company; and the report of
some remarks which they had been so incautious as to drop, in opposition to the
Lynch law in general.

20

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

In order to a lurairaous understanding of the sequel, we must give a brief
description of these suspected five, who were destined to be the ultimate victims.

William Bailey was one of those wandering gamblers peculiar to the south¬
west who roam from place to place, hunting small bets; who are equally at home
on the deck of a steamboat, or on the bench before the door of a backwoods
grocery, provided only, they can get a hand at poker. They would “ gamble with
their God, for the stars,” and run foot-races with the Devil himself, for a treat for
the crowd!

Such was Bailey, a pale, meagre-looking fellow, whose eyes had an ominous
squint, with a singular expression of countenance, half-roguish, and half-idiotic.
The most remarkable moral feature in his character, was his invincible propensity
to falsehood. To lie was as natural to him as to breathe. When, as we shall
hereafter see, he was under examination by the committee, and his own life trem¬
bling in the balance, and wholly depending on the correctness of responses, he
was unable to put two sentences together without the utterance of an untruth ;
and every single fact he stated, always contradicted its fellow immediately pre¬
ceding.

The second of the fated five, was John Richmond, a man infected with the
6ame unconquerable passion for telling lies; low, brutal, and filthy-looking in per¬
son ; and in mind degraded as a Hottentot. He was in every way inferior to
even Bailey; and in courage, he was beyond question, the most timid creature that
ever hired a human shape! perhaps he never did actually take affright at his own
shadow, but to a certainty, he never had bravery sufficient, at his moments of
greatest heroism, to face the shadow of a liviug fellow man ! There was so little
of the will, the essential element of manhood, in his intellectual composition, that
it is doubtful whether he was capable of comprehending the mere meaning of the
word !

The third on the list, was Thomas Jones, of a type of character entirely differ¬
ent. Although scarcely twenty years of age, he was a Hercules at once in size
and in courage. He was an industrious blacksmith, but unfortunately addicted to
intoxication. With that exception, his fame was irreproachable. For in the code
of western morals, we are not to reckon among his peccadilloes, his belligerent
habits, which were in that vicinity as much respected, as they were feared. But
although he was “ sudden and prompt at quarrel,” he was also placable and hu¬
mane. As a single rude word could provoke him beyond endurance, so one kind
look could appease his wrath, and check it even in “ mid-volley.”

Generous to a fault, he was ever the champion of the feeble. The poor drunken
Indian, when insulted by the bullies of civilization, always found a protector in
Tom Jones. When in a “ glorious spree,” of a Saturday night, after his week’s
work was ended, it was needless to bid any one beware the “ Mississippi Alliga¬
tor,” as he termed himself. The veriest stranger would, at a glance, comprehend
his stuff! At fsticuffs he had few equals, among either whites or half-breeds; but
in the play of bowie knives on breast bones, he was absolutely without a rival!

The fourth in the catalogue of victims was Ellerey Turner, a youth of eighteen,
tall, slender, fair-haired, and with features regular, delicate, and even beautiful in
their cast, as those of a woman. His eyes were mild, yet beamy, and blue as the
tints of that southern sky. The whole expression of his countenance was chaste,
sweet, and artlessly simple as the looks of a child.

Ellerey Turner was made to be loved, and he was loved as truly, tenderly,
deeply, as his own heart responded in the mutuality of its love. He was
affianced (when that dreadful calamity fell upon him, crushing, grinding both hope
and life into the dust,) to Rose Quinet, a French Quadroon Cherokee girl, as
beautiful in person as himself.

He had a helpless mother and little sister, ten years old, wholly dependent on
his labor for support. He was a laborer, and a more diligent one never cultivated
the earth’s grateful soil And notwithstanding his limbs had been cast in a slight
mould, they possessed great activity, and a toughness unyielding as tenacious iron.
And though womanly in form and feature, he had the will of a hero, both to do,
and to suffer. His voice had the clear, ringing tones of a bell, heard at morning in

THE VICTIMS.

21

the backwoods, and natural eloquence flowed from his tongue free as water from a
mountain spring.

Under fortunate circumstances of education, and social position, his fame, like
a star, might have gone up the arch of everlasting time, never to go down. As it
was, i, e ******* *. But we shall see.

The fifth and last victim was James Barnes, in every way the most remarkable
among them. A finer specimen of physical organization was never given to my
view. He was six feet in height, with a chest large, round, and compact as an
antique gladiator. His limbs looked as if they had been—not born of ordinary
nature— but chiseled out of some material of more than human mould, by the free
force of exquisite art. The round bones lay imbedded in swelling muscles, that when
he moved, seemed to quiver with energy and grace, as if they were bundles of
magnetised fibres. In all the south-west I have never met with a man his peer in
bodily prowess. He never carried weapons, as is the nearly universal custom of
the country, but relied, in every emergency, on his own gigantic strength of arm,
and the cool intrepidity of soul, that knew not to fear or falter in danger. The
single might of that arm had gained him the victory in desperate conflicts, where
daggers and pistols were arrayed against him.

His head was of a large size, from which fell, in wild luxuriance, long rolls of
curly black hair, waving dense and dark around his broad shoulders, and veiling
from the view his immense mass of neck. His forehead was ample in both height
and breadth, and especially prominent in the region of the ■perceptive organs, which
lay above his eyes of dark Jire, lik e jutting cliffs of marble.

The previous history of this man was deeply tinged with the romantic, not to
say the marvellous. He ran away from his father, a man of great wealth in the
State of Missouri, when a mere boy, and wandered first among the wild tribes of
the West, and subsequently, all over nearly every state in the American Union.
He paid his way by betting on his own speed in the foot-race, and in hundreds of
such contests he had never met with a defeat. He used to say, in jocose banter,
“ that he would bet on beating a streak of lightning and give it ten feet the start,
in a dead set for a hundred yards ! ”

Thus had Barnes continued to rove at will until the age of twenty-five, when
\e fell in love with an amiable maiden of some wealth, and the most beautiful being
I ever beheld, who reciprocated his ardent affection, and consented to become his
wife. They were married, and the wanderer settled down near the Cherokee line,
fn Arkansas, as a country merchant, in a small way. He had been wedded some
three years, was accumulating property, rising in public esteem, and had become
the father of a most lovely little boy—another self—the very image of the father,
when the fatal misfortune overtook him, and all his visions of future happiness
melted away like the golden mist of a dream !

These five men had been sought out, and arrested in different places. Turner
was taken at his plough, Barnes in his storehouse, and Bailey, Richmond and
vones, from a grocery, where they were deep in a game of “ seven-tip .” There
was an incident rather ludicrous in the arrest of Jones. In the south-west they
..ever say “ grocery.” They designate that interesting locality by the more
euphonical appellation of “ doggery.”

But as there are different kinds of doggeries in essential character, as to
respectability, and as backwoodsmen abhor circumlocution in speech, they have
contrived an easy method of denoting the two general sorts of doggeries, those of
the highest, and those of the lowest grade, by a difference in the sound of the final
syllable. When they are speaking of a genteel doggery, they sound the last syllable
like e—“ doggeree.” But when they refer to one of a lower order, they give the
last syllable the sound of i, with a long accent, as “ doggeri.”

Now, the aforesaid Jones was something of a poet, and had mad * a choice little
song, in which these different sounds of the final syllable in doggery, played an
important part, as rhyming terminations ! Intently occupied with the game then
in progress, he was singing, or rather roaring out in stentorian bass, unconsciously
from long habit, the first stanza of his aforesaid song :—

22

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

“ On the wings of love I’ll fly,

From doggeree to doggery! ”

The three were so deeply immersed in the chances of the game, that they did not
perceive the doggery was filling slowly and silently with armed men. Still they
fiercely shuffled their cards, and slapped them down with hard blows on the table,
which was the head of an old brandy barrel. And still Jones every minute roared
aloud his favorite stanza, “ On the wings of love,” &c., occasionally alternating it
with the last verse in the song:—

“ The stars shine in the hollow sky,

But I shine in a doggery! ”

At length, sudden as thought, all their dispositions being arranged, the lynchers
seized the unconscious three. Bailey and Richmond were instantly overpowered,
their hands pinioned behind them, and the rope knotted hard and fast. Not half
so easy a task was the securing of the poet, Jones, although half a dozen had
pounced on him at once. Some had snatched his pistols from his belt, and his
bowie knife, “ tooth-pick,” as he called it, from his bosom. Several had grasped
his wrists, one had seized him from behind in a hug hard as a black bear’s. But
he made one mighty sudden effort, and shook them all off, as a lion shakes the
dew-drops from his mane. Some he knocked down sprawling on the floor with
his right hand, some with his left. Some he lifted from the earth, and sent to the
opposite wall with a single kick of his foot. But the lynchers, in the meantime,
though astounded by the desperation of the giant, were nothing daunted. They
were all too familiar with such scenes for that.' As fast as some fell before the
big blows of those fists , which looked like sledge-hammers, others took their place.
A half-a-dozen pistols were fired at the desperado, without effect. His head was
gashed by the stroke of clubs, which still failed to bring him down. Borne tickled
his ribs with their bowie knives, though so rapid were his motions, and so great
the dread of those fearful blows he dealt around in every direction, that he was not
wounded in a vital part.

At length Captain Bean worked his way through the crowd, within a proper
striking distance, and felled the modern Sampson to the earth with a heavy club.
He was then secured : and all three marched off to the stern tribunal.

Bailey was the first one examined. His response was a tissue of contradictions.
Every sentence was a falsehood, which always seemed to be uttered for the pur¬
pose of augmenting the suspicions against himself. So that the committee of thirty
tt last concluded that he was an idiot; and as he established the sine qua non,
alibi, he was restored to liberty for the time being.

The examination of Richmond’s case occurred next; and terminated pretty
much in the same manner.

Then, Jones was called before the committee, to pass through the fiery ordeal
of judicial investigation. His appearance was absolutely appalling. There were
two or three deep red gashes on his face, marks of his recent conflict—gashes still
unbound, save by the self-supplied bandage of clotted gore, which had gradually
dried up, and thus repressed the farther effusion of the kindred veins that supplied
its source. His long yellow hair was dabbled and matted with blood, from the
many deep wounds on his head. His countenance was frightfully ferocious with
a passion now impotent from his situation; but, loaded with chains as he was,
many a face turned pale as he was brought forward, under a guard of six men with
pistols, some cocked and ready in their hands.

“ Uncle Buck” opened the examination by requesting, in his hoarsest tones of
solemn guttural, the Blacksmith to inform the committee where he was on the
night of the murder. The eyes of Jones literally flashed lurid sparks of fire, as he

shouted his reply in a voice of thunder,—“ Go to hell and find out, you d-d

old hypocrite, if you want to know. You may kill but you can’t scare me! ” and
then followed a torrent of denunciation against the lynchers in general, and almost
every member in particular, bitter, boundless, in its coarse invective, as any ever
uttered by an attorney feed high in a capital case. Some of the committee began
to talk about burning. But such threats had no effect upon Jones ; for, as he used

THE VICTIMS.

23

to say of himself—“ There was not a drop of coward blood from the top of his
head to the end of his big toe ! ” He never opened his lips in answer to a ques¬
tion of the president, but to emit taunts and curses.

Accordingly the committee were preparing to execute their favorite punishment,
by trying the combustibility of their victim, when a respectable man, who lived near
the Indian line, having been informed of the arrest of Jones, and knowing his in¬
nocence, came forward voluntarily, and after being sworn, deposed, “ that on the
unfortunate night of the homicide, Jones was drunk at his grocery—so drunk as
to be incapable of getting away ; and that he had locked him up there until morn¬
ing ! ” So here again the committee were balked. Jones was also liberated!

James Barnes was next examined. His bearing was heroic yet dignified. The
clearness of his statements and the promptitude of his replies to all interrogations,
manifestly disconcerted the committee. Not a tone of his manly voice, not a line
of his features, indicated either wrath or fear. He stood as if he were upon
a serene eminence, far above the base passions and mean revenge, of that excited
and sensual crowd. His retorts to expressed or implied insinuations, were caustic
and withering. Some of his expressions were eloquent to sublimity. The peril
of the emergency had changed the man. He was the foot-racer, James Barnes,
no longer. He was a hero—a king, and the free force of an immense Will was
his sceptre. His high, imperturbable demeanor awed, almost disarmed, the fury
of his foes, in spite of themselves. For there is a quality in true courage, that
commands respect from even wild beasts. Jt was only when a proposition was
made to bring up his wife for examination, that he lost, for one instant only, his
sublime self-control. A blush of burning crimson flashed over his brow, his lips
turned white as ashes, and his dark eyes gleamed, with a blue-greenish color, like
the orbs of an enraged rattle-snake.

The expression passed away in a moment, and was succeeded by one mild and
mournful; and those black, blazing orbs filled with tears of saddened torture.
That was a fearful sight to behold. The bravest man in the backwoods wept like
a child! Wept, not for his own wrongs, but for the indignity about to be offered
to one dearer than his own soul—the beautiful young wife of his bosom !

The keen vision of the committee-men detected the sudden emotion, and mis¬
interpreted it as the token of guilt. And so the infamous proposal was resolved
without a dissenting vote.

The wife of Barnes, who had accompanied her husband to the adjacent village
of Boonsborough, before mentioned, was accordingly ordered before the reverend
committee. She came in tears, with her little boy in her arms.

When she first approached the president’s chair, a long black veil concealed
her features. Her steps were trembling. She glanced slowly around the assem¬
bly, till her eyes rested on him , who was her heart’s life, standing there in his
chains. Then she made one quick bound to his bosom, and with choking sobs,
threw one arm around his neck—the other held her child. And the poor child, it
too murmured, “ father,” and wept because its mother wept!

A few minutes passed in that dumb show of grief. For what heart is there
beating in a human bosom, so icy cold as not to feel a gleaming of warmth beneath
the presence of the universal sunshine of holy love 1 ? Holy in its sorrow, as well
as in its joy !

At length, the president informed that wife, trembling in her fear that emanated
only from her infinite affection, that it was necessary for her to undergo an exami¬
nation in reference to the charge made against her husband. And some brutal,
unfeeling wretch, (I have forgotten his name, or I would gladly hold him up to the
execration of the world.) suggested that they ought to have a full view of her
features, so as to be able to decide, from her countenance, the credibility of her
narration. And accordingly, she was required to raise her veil !

The mandate was obeyed. And then was seen the effect of peeress and chaste
beauty on men mad with irrational excitement. An expression of pleasing sur¬
prise passed as a gleam of sunshine through the clefts in a gloomy cloud, over
many a face before dark with scowlings of vengeance. An involuntary murmur
ran from lip to lip, “ She at least is innocent,” to which responses replied, “ Both

24

THE DESPERADOES OP THE 80UTH-WEST.

are innocent, botb are innocent! ” There was something in this instantaneous
change, that touched me even to tears. It was to me another confirmation of my
favorite theory— That man never becomes wholly degraded, either by passion or educa¬
tion ; that a divinity lurks in concealment at the profoundest depths of every human
heart, however fettered by custom, and however obscured by evil emotions—that
divinity which responds to beauty, and worships virtue as itself divine I Human
nature may become rotten in its faith; but the heart is always sound !

I had, when a boy, read the fable of the hungry lion, that ceased his roaring,
and grew tame before the loveliness of a virgin, in her pride of grace. Now, I
saw the fable realized, as a man!

Indeed the beauty of that woman was of the rarest order. The charm of
enchantment was not so much in her sylph-like figure, her azure eyes, dovelike in
their artless tenderness; her hair as fine as the morning gossamer, and yellow as
refined gold, whose ringlets looked bright as plumes on the wings of love himself.
No, certainly, the witchery, the mystic spell lay not in these, so much as in an
indescribable, angelic sweetness of countenance, sweet but mournful, and warm as
gentle pity, yet chaste as the sunbeam, when it kisses the pale cheek of a summer
cloud!

Pardon this episode, courteous reader of the great city, pardon, nor deem this
exaggerated eulogy on a simple wife of the country, unadorned in her dress, and
fustic in her manners. For, know to a sacred certainty, wherever God has given
to man xcoman, either in the city or the country, he has vouchsafed beauty and
virtue also along with her. I have been a traveller from my boyhood. I have
been, and am, a pilgrim. The world is my shrine, and everywhere, even among
the rudest savages, as well as among people the most civilized, robed iu rags, or
rustling in Persian silks, have I found those angels with bright hair, dear sisters of
the common humanity, ministering at the altar of eternal beauty, the divine incense
of love, in the golden censer of purest virtue l

Doubt not, brethren, but believe. Our depressed, slandered human nature is
^cber than the poor skeptic deems. It is not God ; but it is God’s !

And so that beautiful woman was heard, with feelings attracted towards the
truth of her story, under a prepossession exercised primarily in favor of her radiant
loveliness only.

Her narration substantially corroborated that of her husband ; and as two other
witnesses confirmed her statements, another alibi was clear, and Barnes was also
fieed from his fetters.

Ellerey Turner, the last of the five, was then arraigned. He came not to the
fearful tribunal alone. By his side, among those armed men, was Rose Quinet, his
affianced, the Cherokee Quadroon previously mentioned. For in spite of the re¬
monstrances of her mother, on learning his danger that slender girl, of wild-hearted
instinct, had hastened to the presence of her lover, and now for three days and
qights had sat by him in his chains.

I shall not attempt to draw a portrait of the beautiful Quadroon. I will request
the reader to paint the picture, in fancy, for himself. I will drop but a single hint
to aid him.

Gentle reader, are you a citizen of New-York 1 If so, you often walk in
Broadway of a Sunday evening. And if you walk in Broadway of a Sunday
evening, you must have noticed, (if you have eyes,) yes, you could not help but
notice, amidst the flow of the living stream of fair faces, over-crowned with those
bubbles of snowy coiffure—love-bonnets, that glide on the air as if their fluttering
ribbons were wings—aye, one star in the moving constellation of serenest, 01
sweetest, or sunniest beauty, more beautiful than all the rest; a slight, child-like
brunette, whose eyes beat all the diamonds in the world, whose hair falls in slender
wavy curls, vnbraided, free, far down her shoulders, and around those veiled rose¬
bud breasts, twin pillows for sleeping Eros, curtained with curls of jet, dark-glossy
as the plumes of the raven, seen in the light of the setting sun. Her face is small,
and round as if cut with a sculptor’s chisel. You could span her waist with the
clasp of your two hands. Her dark brow is pensive as night, when coining out of
all its stars celestial songs for the ear of the poet. She ever moves alone, like the

THB VICTIMS.

25

queenly moon, that pale orphan of the sky, as if she had no friend or relative on
the earth. Her fairy feet are small as a child’s, and do not walk, but glide! Are
they plumed with invisible wings 1 Had I all the wealth of the world, an empire
for my heritage, a throne instead of a writing desk, a sceptre in place of a pen, I
would give it all to possess such a treasure, and reckon the exchange a great
bargain!

Such is the beauty of Broadway, that walks of a Sunday evening. But more
beautiful than she was Rose Quinet, the Cherokee quadroon, affianced to Ellerey
Turner, the youth accused of murder.

When he was called before the committee, as I said before, she came with him,
and sat down before him, with her look fixed, during all his examination, steadily
and tenderly on his face alone. She seemed, in fact, unconscious of any other
presence.

As a specimen of the method observed by the committee in their investigations,
I will here set down the examination of Turner in the exact words of the questions
and answers, as nearly as 1 can recollect them.

Uncle Buck. —(With infinite solemnity.)—Mr. Turner, will you please inform
the committee where you were on the night of the murder of Wright and family ?

Turner. —(In a calm, clear, silver-ringing tone of voice.)—I wish first to be in¬
formed what right you have either to question or suspect me ?

Uncle Buck. —It is needless to talk about that. We have all gone through the
same examination, and you must do so too.

Turner. —But you were not examined in chains 1

Uncle Buck. —(Disconcerted.)—There was no ground to suppose we were mur¬
derers.

Turner. —And what ground have you for supposing that I am a murderer ? Is
there any one among you that toils for bis daily bread more industriously than 1 1
You have all known mo from my boyhood. Say, as honest men, have you ever
heard a charge against my character 1 Have 1 ever, until now, been accused of
any crime, unless it be a crime to be poor, and to work for the support of my
mother, and the schooling of my little sister ? Tell me, therefore, before I am
compelled to answer, what circumstances of suspicion can ye urge against me 1

Uncle Buck. (With increasing ferocity,) “ It is suspicion enough, that you seem
unwilling to tell where you were when Wright’s family were butchered. Let us
be done with your impertinence, and answer immediately, the questions put to you! ”

Turner. (With a slight bitterness in his accent,) “ But reverend sir, will you
be so obliging as to inform me what consequences will follow, suppose I do not
see proper to answer you 1 ”

Uncle Buck. (In the growling tone of a mad bear.) “ You will be roasted alive,
that is all! ”

Turner. “ Then I have only to assure you positively, and once for all, that I
will not answer your question .”

The face of every member of the committee assumed a look of blank astonish¬
ment. Such temerity seemed inexplicable. Directly they collected closer together
in little knots of groups, whispering in under-tones, darting all the while vengeful
glances at Turner, who still stood there, calm and motionless as a statue of marble,
with Rose seated on a block of blue limestone, at his feet, looking mournfully at
his face, seemingly buried in unfathomable thought.

Five minutes or more elapsed, when Captain Bean arose and in a cool, busi¬
ness-like tone, ordered a heap of dry brush-wood to be piled up at the foot of a
hickory tree, which he pointed to with his finger

Several persons hastened to obey the mandate; and in ten minutes more a
large brush-heap was built up on the spot designated.

During this interval, Rose was seen to rise from her sitting posture, and whis
per long and eagerly in the ear of her lover, as if she were striving to persuade him
to do something repugnant to his wishes. And ever as her earnestness increased,
he was seen to shake his head, as in denial. This only seemed to intensify the
fervor of her petitions. Her countenance grew eloquent in its pleading look of
entreaty. Her gestures became vehement Her brow was mantled with blushes.

26

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

A large tear gathered in her deep, black eye. And in the wilderment of her anx¬
iety, she threw her beautiful round arm over the neck of the youth, there, in the
presence of that truculent crowd.

Her spell was broken by another order of Captain Bean, uttered in the same
cool, slow, severe tones—“ Johnson Coulter, will you be so good as to go and bring
us a torch of pine knots.”

A frightful shudder shook the limbs of that poor girl for an instant, and then
she turned hastily to the clerical inquisitor’s chair, and said in a low, sweet voice,
that almost imperceptibly trembled with emotion, “ Uncle Buck, I will answer for
him, since it is on my account he refuses to answer for himself. He staid all night
at mother’s, on the night of the Cane-Hill murder. He staid with me. Mother
was away from home.” And the dark cheek of the beautiful being blushed red as
a summer sun-set, and her gaze fell down to the green grass, at her feet. A beastly
sneering smile passed over the faces of some of the committee. But these were
beasts. I*hey mostly looked puzzled—all but the rubicund visage of Uncle Buck,
who seemed to rejoice at another chance to play the inquisitor. So essaying to
mitigate the hideous bags of that guttural, (which he had acquired partly, by the
habit of preaching long and loud at camp meetings,) so as to render it suitably
mild, for an address to the ears of a female, the hoarse minister of mercy proceed
ed to question her.

“ But my dear Miss, have you any proof of what you state ] for it seems to me
that you are an interested party: (and here Uncle Buck strove to pucker up his
fat features into a jocose smile,) a wife is not allowed, in law to testify in behalf of
her husband. You are engaged to be married to Mr. Turner, I believe 1 ”

Rose. I am.

Uncle Buck. Then, in that case we cannot admit your bare, unsupported evi¬
dence, my pretty maiden. We are sorry for you; but we must be governed by
the legal rules of evidence.

Rose. But have you any proof against Ellerey 1

Uncle Buck. That is not to the purpose. We have laid down the rule, that
every person must prove his own innocence or bear the consequences. There is
uo other method of avenging the atrocious murder.

Rose. You are a learned preacher of the Gospel, and I am an uneducated
Indian girl—but I would humbly ask, if such a rule is either the justice of the law,
or the mercy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Uncle Buck. (With a savage frown,) We have taken the law into our own
hands ; and the Gospel has no mercy for murderers and thieves.

Rose. At what hour of the night was the murder committed 1

Uncle Buck. About nine o’clock.

At this reply a joyful smile of triumph beamed out on the lovely face of the
Quadroon maiden ; and she responded quickly—“Ye will not believe me ; send to
Boonsborough, for Abel Thompson, and he will satisfy you that all I have said is
true.” Then she turned with a look of meek hope, away from the clerical chair
of the backwoods inquisition, and resumed her position at the feet of her lover.

The committee manifested great surprise when she named Abel Thompson as
a witness, to confirm her statements. He was a citizen of Cane-Hill, well known
and highly respected.

Afier a few minutes consultation, he was sent for—appeared in less than half
an hour; and being sworn, testified “ that oq the fatal night of the murder, he was
returning home from Fort Gibson, where he had been on business; that from the
circumstance of his having an appointment early the following morning to meet a
friend on Cane-Hill, he was compelled to travel nearly all night; that about ten
o’clock, he passed Mis. Quinet’s in the Cherokee Nation, and being very thirsty,
called and got a drink of water; that Rose Quineton recognizing his voice, when
he asked the negro girl for water, came to the door and kindly invited him to
alight and take supper, which she said was then ready on the table. That having
travelled all day without stoppiug for dinner, he was quite hungry and therefore
gladly accepted the invitatioi ; that he found Ellerey Turner there; but that
Rose informed him that her mother was away from home.”

THE VICTIMS AGAIN ARRESTED.

27

Abel Thompson concluded his statements, by remarking "that as Mrs. Quinet
resided about twenty miles from Cane-Hill, and as Ellerey Turner was there at ten
o’clock, he must necessarily be innocent of the crime suspected.”

And so here again another alibi was proven ; and Turner was also liberated.

Tlte committee then held a secret meeting, from whose sitting all strangers, all
spectators were excluded ; and soon adjourned indefinitely

CHAPTER III.

THE VICTIMS AGAIN ARRESTED.

About one week after the date of the proceedings enumerated in the last chap¬
ter, a general muster of militia was had on Cane-Hill.

In the meantime, from the irritation produced by the memory of those shame¬
ful wrongs, the foe who had suffered most keenly, had, as a matter of course, said
many hard things concerning the Cane-Hill Lynchers, in which censure their
friends had joined, and a strong tide of popular feeling was beginning to flow in
their favor.

The committee had also secretly instituted a base system of espionage. And
the meanest of mankind,— loafers, who lived but around the groceries, made due
report of every word uttered against the Lynchers by their enemies, often of
course, with manifold exaggerations.

Thus, an extremity of bitterness of feeling pervaded the community. Mutual
recriminations and bloody threats were made on either side. And when the
general muster came round, the better and calmer portion of the people were in
dread of some fierce outbreak of wrathful passion, that should result in a state of
civil war, or in assassinations still more disgraceful.

The parade however went off quietly enough. And that being over, the militia
betook themselves, according to the custom of the backwoods, to the groceries for
grog , fun, and frolic, which generally end in a glorious row.”

On this occasion it was like the mingling of fire and gunpowder. The explo¬
sion was instantaneous.

Barnes, Turner, and some half a dozen friends entered a whiskey-shop, where
a hundred or more lynchers were already “ half seas over,” and called for a set of
glasses.

Johnson Coulter, one of the most ferocious-fiery members of the Cane-Hill
company, addressed them with a loud oath, saying, “ that gentlemen would not

allow d-d murderers and robbers to drink in their presence,” and suiting

the deed to the word, forthwith whipped out his bowie knife, and presented jts
point at Barnes’ breast. And then the general fight commenced.

We have stated before that contrary to the custom of the frontier country,
Barnes never wore arms. His almost Titanic strength of muscle sufficing him for
every emergency.

So at the very instant Coulter made his murderous gesture, with one blow of
his fist, Barnes struck the right arm of the desperadoe powerless down to his side;
with his own left hand seized him by the throat, and striking with his right hand,
every adverse foe ; fighting against dozens at once, who crowded into so small a
space only embarrassed each other’s motions. He dragged his first assailant out
of the room; threw him rudely on the earth, and set his foot on his neck !

In the meantime Turner had fought his way out of the Grocery also; and
findii-g Barnes near the door, handed him one of his bowie knives, (on that day
ne wore two,) and a Deringer pistol. Thus armed the crowd made way, and

THE DESPERADOES OP THE SODTH-WEST.

left an open space around them. Barnes then took his foot off Coulter’s neck, and
let the wretch go, remarking “ that he disdained to pollute his soul with the base
blood of a coward ! ”

Many pistols had been fired in the grocery, and several men on both sides were
severely wounded; but fortunately no lives were lost.

While circumstances thus stood, a friend approached Barnps and Turner, and
whispered to them that Captain Bean and some fifty of his men were loading their
rifles, and would be there in a moment.

The two heroes then made an immediate retreat, taking two wounded friends
along with them. The crowd recoiled, opened to the right and left, and let them
pass.

Captain Bean and his rifles arrived the minute after, but they did not see fit to
follow their retiring foes.

This occurrence created a still greater excitement. The lynchers discovered
that they had to deal with the most determined and resolute of men. And as we
naturally fear those whom we have wronged, they began to regard Barnes, Turner,
and Jones with unmingled dread. They could not but believe, (judging others by
themselves,) that men of such unequivocal courage would seek the earliest fit op¬
portunity to avenge an outrage, as cruel as it was publicly perpetrated. That night
they held a secret meeting, the resolutions of which we have had no means of learn¬
ing.

A few days afterwards it was rumored that new and startling evidence had
come to light. The committee was again assembled, but in private session, to
which no spectator was admitted.

Hundreds of people collected at Boonsborough, with eyes eagerly cast on the
Cone, where the Committee sat, anxious to penetrate the mystery in which their
present proceedings were shrouded.

A well-known girl, who lived on the line, not far from Barnes’ store—one who
belonged to the order of pleasure—was seen passing through the village, and as¬
cending Committee-Hill, accompanied by two chosen members of the company.

About two hours afterwards a select band of fifty men, armed with rifles, pis¬
tols, and bowies, mounted their horses and galloped off southwards, in the direction
of Barnes’ residence. All men felt satisfied that this band were bound on some
daring enterprize. For not only were they all picked men—men of tried bravery
—but Captain Bean rode at their head, with a double row of pistols in his belt and
a double-barreled shot-gun of the largest calibre on his shoulder, with each hammer
at half-cock. He doubtless thought to take his enemies by surprise; but in this he
was mistaken. For whether some secret friend had informed the destined victims
of the mysterious signs of approaching danger, or recent occurrences had put
them on their guard, I am unable to say ; but certain it is, that when Captain Bean
and his band arrived near Barnes’ house they discovered it to be in a stale of men¬
acing defence. Barnes himself, Turner, Jones, and some half a dozen of their
friends were assembled. And when the assailants got within fifty yards of the
door, some eight or uine long iron tubes, of the biggest bore, were suddenly pro¬
truded from port-holes cut in the walls of the log-cabin.

The advancing column of cavalry hesitated, recoiled, and beat a hasty retreat to
the cover of an adjacent grove of trees. There a hot and hasty debate took place.
Some were eager to hitch their horses and make a headlong rush on the house.
But this proposition was opposed by the more dispassionate, who alleged that it
would be certain death to half their number at least, thus to charge on a place so
fortified, and defended by men who would dare every extremity. And finally, as
Captain Bean concurred in this opinion, it was determined that they should return,
leaving their foes fur the present without molestation. So they went back to Cane-
Hill as they came, with the addition of a somewhat lugubrious, crest-fallen counte¬
nance, sadly anticipating the jokes that would be uttered at their expense; for
there is no Horace which a backwoods-man so much dreads as an imputation
against his courage, as that is generally regarded the chief of the virtues—a virtue
that, like charity among true Christians, “ atones for a multitude of sins ! ”

When the report of their failure was made to the committee, it filled them with

THE TICTIMS AGAIN ARRESTED.

29

astonishment. A new phase in the progress of lynching was seen to have been
developed. Henceforth there must be taking before hanging; and taking now
bade fair to prove the most difficult, and by far the most dangerous part of the process.

Various opinions were expressed as to the next step to be taken. Some were
for assembling their entire force, committee and all, and for marching immediately
on their enemies, and take or slay them, at whatever cost.

Uncle Buck, president, Sam Harris, and other Reverends, advised to wait till
they could send to Fayetteville and procure the two pieces of cannon, and then to
proceed to Barnes’ house, and from a safe distance, planting their artillery out of
rifle-range of the cabin, to batter it down, killing all, men, women, and children!

A murmur of approval greeted this merciful and Christian advice, which also
possessed the needful advantage of not being over-perilous in its execution.

In the deliberations of the committee Captain Bean always spoke last. On this
occasion, after all had expressed themselves—some foolishly enough, too—he arose,
and iu a few sentences satisfied all that the best course, for the present, was to break
up their sitting, return to their several homes, profess themselves convinced of the
innocence of Barnes and his associates, and thus throw them off their guard; and
hold no more meetings until the guilty were arrested, which he assured the com-
tiittee, if they would adopt his plan, he would warrant himself, should take place
at an early period.

And this infamous course was agreed on ; hypocrysy was added to revenge, and
the committee once more adjourned, sine die.

The rumor was then industriously circulated, by Captain Bean’s emissaries,
that the committee and company were perfectly satisfied as to the innocence of the
men whom they had so lately denounced as certainly guilty. And to make sure
of the effect intended to be produced by this rumor, Captain Bean, alone and un¬
armed, sought an interview with Barnes, and assured him, with the most solemn
pledges of his oath and of his honor, that the committee, to a man, were all now
assured of his innocence, and of the innocence of his friends, having become tho¬
roughly convinced that the murder had been committed by the Indians.

The vile stratagem took. Barnes and his friends disarmed themselves, and re¬
turned to their ordinary avocations.

About a week afterwards Barnes, Turner, and Jones, were engaged reaping in a
harvest-field, when they were suddenly surrounded by two hundred men, headed by
Captain Bean ; and being wholly without weapons, or any means of defence, were
arrested, taken to a blacksmith’s-shop hard by, once more, and for the last time put
in chains, and hurried off to Cane-Hill, to appear again before the committee of
thirty.

And now again that committee was in session, on the sam e judicial cone. The
whole strength of the company was called together, and thousands of anxious spec¬
tators collected at Boonsborough, from all parts of the country, even from southern
Missouri, and from the Indian territory.

Through the intervention of a friend 1 was permitted to be present at the de¬
liberations of the committee, and to see and hear everything that happened. Sev¬
eral other members of the bar obtained the same permission. This time the com¬
mittee sat several days in succession. Many witnesses were brought before them
and examined; but their testimony was exceedingly slight. It mostly related to
looks; tones of the voice; mysterious gestures ; words let fall in fits of intoxica¬
tion ; expressions of hatred towards the men, or the actions of the Cane-Hill Com¬
pany, uttered in a slate of passion, by those now doomed to be the victims, or by
their relatives and friends. All the rules of legal evidence were outraged ; all the
ordinary methods of proof were set at nought. Hearsay, vague rumor, were so¬
lemnly installed in authority. A shake of the head, a shrug of the shoulders, were
regarded as unquestionable proofs of guilt. A change of countenance from red to
pale, observed even by moonlight, was gravely related as an infallible symptom of
a conscience ill at ease ; and every word disapproving the proceedings of the lynch¬
ers was set down as a positive proof of murder.

On the third day of this last session of the committee, appeared as a witness
the girl of the "free series ,” before alluded to—Ann Mitchell. Red-haired, red-

30

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

eyed, brazen-browed, and half-drunk, her presence produced, in the cant phi ase
of fashionable life, quite a sensation. The young laughed : the old looked grave.
The preachers groaned.

As for myself, though by no means an ascetic, I must confess I felt a cold shud¬
der creep over me when “ Romping Ann,” as she was commonly called, kissed the
Bible, with a loud smack, and commenced her narration, with an air at once pert
and pompously ludicrous.

She stated that John Richmond, one of the parties arrested, was her lover.
That some two weeks previously he had staid all night with her. That he was
drunk, and said to her that he had a secret to tell her if she would promise to keep
it. That she gave the promise demanded, and he then told her, “ that himself,
James Barnes, Ellerey Turner, Thomas Jones, and William Bailey, were the men
who murdered Wright and his family; and that if she ever said a word about it
he would kill her on sight.”

It is needless to say that this story was the very extreme of improbability, bor¬
dering close on the impossible. For no conceivable motive could be assigned for
the disclosure which the witness detailed. It was not likely that Richmond, weak
as he was, so soon after his late peril, would voluntarily reveal so bloody a secret,
and to a character so notoriously infamous as “ Romping Ann.”

Still there is a mystery in the fact of her testimony, which can only be explain¬
ed on one of two suppositions. Either she stated the truth, or, as I believe, she
had been paid, by some infernal in the service of the company, to trump up the
story, so as to give a pretext of justice to the vengeance which many regarded as
already too long delayed.

Be this as it may, the committee 6eemed satisfied with her statements, and
resolved to act accordingly.

John Richmond was then ordered before them, and informed of the evidence
detailed against him. He turned pale as a corpse. And this circumstance was
considered an absolute demonstration of his guilt. He was then told that he could
expect no mercy unless he made a full confession, both as related to himself and
his accomplices in crime. Bnt although evidently frighted almost out of his wits,
the poor wretch solemnly affirmed his innocence. Every stratagem was used, to
work both on his hopes and fears, but without success. He was then stripped na¬
ked, tied to a tree, and whipped with young hickory switches, till his bare back
was cut into ribbons of gory skin, and the blood ran down and stood in red pud¬
dles at his feet, staining the greensward crimson. Several times during the terrible
flaggellation he fainted ; cold water was thrown in his face; and still on his revi¬
val to a state of consciousness, he was urged to confess, and still he persisted, with
unlooked for obstinacy in one so craven, in the assertion of his innocence.

At length, concluding that no degree of torture of that species, at least, could
extort a confession, the committee ordered him to be unbound from the tree. His
clothes were put on, and preparations were made to burn him. They commenced
building a large brush-heap, composed of dry oak-limbs, interspersed with rich
pine-knots.

Richmond, as well as all the other prisoners, wore a heavy chain of iron, one
end of which was hard riveted around the neck and the other was fastened to the
ancle. These chains were twice the length of a man’s body, so that when the sup¬
posed culprits walked they were compelled to fold up their middle portions, and
carry the links in their hands.

As his funeral pyre grew rapidly in size, by the addition of fresh heaps of
brush-wood and larger heaps of fat pine, I saw a change come over the counte¬
nance of Richmond. A look of intense determination gleamed in his eye. His
thin lips were tight compressed between his teeth, which showed sharp and white
as ivory. His nerves ceased to tremble. Gradually and imperceptibly he gather¬
ed up the folds of his chain, and so softly that its clanking was hardly audible.

Then suddenly making a great leap, with his utmost strength, he cleared himself
from his immediate guards, and fled swiftly down the hill.

The movement was so sudden, that it took almost every one by surprise; all
but one who was guarding him,—a young man by the name of Dunn. He. like

THE VICTIMS AGAIN ARRESTED 31

myself, bad observed the change in Richmond’s demeanor before he broke away,
and divining its meaning, had cocked his pistol in his pocket and had his finger on
the trigger.

And so at the very instant Richmond ran, Dunn drew his pistol and fired
within a few feet of his back. But strange to say, the bullet missed its aim,
ranging too low—grazed the cheek of Uncle Buck, and pierced deep into a
walnut tree, against which I was sitting, within three inches of my head.

The first emotion of surprise being over, all joined in a hurrying pursuit.

Richmond not understanding his massy fetters of iron, clanking like the ring
of a cracked bell, fled onward, rapid as the wind. He had started expecting, nay
linking to be shot, preferring that, to a death by burning ! But now finding sudden
wings in despair, changeful hope lent him hers also—the eager hope, born of the
infinite desire of dear life—dearest, deepest wish in the heart-shrine of all human
creatures.

Every nerve was strung tight as the strings of a violin. Every energy was
plied amain. Over fallen trees, and rocks, and precipices, on he fled. Through
thorns and thickets of the wild brier, mantled with snowy blooms, still on he fled,
leaving his clothes and skin in “ shreds and patches,” hanging on the sharp-pointed
thorns behind him.

He gained on his pursuers. For his desperation leaped the steep rocks, which
their ardor could not dare, and around which they had to make short circuits, that
left them farther in the rear.

They shouted to one another to shoot him; “shoot,” “shoot,” resounded
through the forest; and the sharp reports of a dozen rifles, and the dull booming
of as many muskets started two old ravens, on a blasted limb overhead : (evil
omen !) and they flew, croaking savage cries like dark demons, away far to tho
westward !

None of the shots took effect, on account of the distance of their object, and
the density of the clustering trees through which they were aimed.

And now the poor wretch neared the rocky rivulet, that gurgled at the base
of the hill, down which he had precipitated his headlong, dangerous flight. But
there new, and wholly unexpected foemen awaited him. The firing of the guns,
and the boisterous din of shouts and curses had aroused the thousands, that day,
assembled at Boonsborough, and drew them all in a confused, excited mass, in the
direction of the clamor. And so as the victim was on the point of escaping from
the assassins behind him, he suddenly found himself enveloped in a crowd equally
as furious, rushing on him in front, and cut off all prospect of escape.

He uttered one wild, loud yell of agony, and fell headlong in that “babbling
brook,” that still flowed sweet murmuring on, “ like happiness away ! ”

Ho was instantly re : captured, and conducted again to the peak of “ Commit¬
tee Hill,” as it was then named, and has since retained the name.

An incident occured during the pursuit, that I cannot forbear recording. An
incident that will live in the tablets of my memory, as if enamelled in pencilings of
fire, surrounded by a circle of saddest gloom.

One moment after the firing of the guns, which roared as if a whole platoon
had let off at once, reverberating from hill to hill, and sounding back in hollow
echoes from the many caves, bored out long ages ago, in the blue limestone—a
wail arose in the air from the little village of Boonsborough; the wail of two
female voices, loud, piercing, and full of unutterable woe. It was a scream of
despair, and tears and torture—solemn as a requiem for the dead; the tenderest,
deepest, mournfullest ever heard !

It was the funeral wail of the young wife for her husband,—of the maiden for
her plighted lover. It was the sad music of sorrow given out by the chords of
hope, as they snapped asunder forever !

For the wife of Barnes, and Rose Quinet were at the house of a widowed
saint, servant of the great World-Saviour, who like him, felt compassion foi the
outcast mourners, deserted by all beside. The name of this holy widow was
Mary Ellis, commonly known as “ the widow Ellis.” Her morality was deeds of
kindness. Her creed was only love.

32

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

And so when she saw the beautifnl mourners sitting pale, and baptised in
their team, in the streets of the village, forbidden all access to their heart’s only
idols, dearer now than ever in danger; when she saw these poor sisters thus alone,
and deserted by all mankind—objects of insult to the coarse inebriate, and of
laughter and filthy jest to the pitiless crowd—the mob of brute animality; then
regardless of the lies of poisoned malice, unheeding of the scorn of all, she look
them into her humble hut, in Boonsborougli, and strove to assuage their grief,
with those honeyed words, and tones, and tender looks of angelic sympathy, which
never, on this unfeeling earth, flow, save when they flow from the blessed presence
of a woman, whose mild eyes are encircled by the rainbow radiancy of mercy, as
a star of glory by its halo!

She treated them as if they were her own soul’s sisters. And were they not so
indeed ? for oh! are not all women sisters and all men brothers, by virtue of the
common humanity, the indissoluble, eternal unity, that sheds down the celestial
ideas, as rhys of the same sun, into the luminous chambers of all heads alike,—and
pours out the sparkling emotious, as sundered streams of the same current of mystic
electricity, warming all hearts alike also 1

Answer me,—yes me,—your brother,—your God-glassed image,—your other
self, because a man ! Answer me, ye phrenologists, who prate of “ organs,”—ye
philosophers, who analyze souls,—ye starry-dreaming poets, who gaze down into
the fathomless great deep of the human heart,—ye Christian theologians, whose
fet-t are “ beautiful on the mountains” of sorrow, as ye proclaim “ the good news”
to all,—answer me, one and all,—are we uot all as much alike, as a bed of roses in
one garden,—as the snowy lilies in the same field 1 Are we not brethren of the
whole blood 1 Nay, are we not all twins,—uot Siamese twins bound together by
a single ligament; but twins of the upper ether,—a bundle of celestial souls, a sheaf
of the same heart-fibres, twined into one, by a million common threads, spun on the
same golden wheel of heaven, and steeped all over in the same sea of universal,
mysterious magnetism ]

So deemed that meek widow, when she received those two weepers into her
lowly dwelling. There, in painful anxiety, they were waiting an issue, on which
depended their all here, for all life hereafter under the suu. And when they
heard the fierce diu, and the rolling peal of the rifles, they hastily concluded, that
all was over; and both together spontaneously broke forth into that loud wailing
cry of irrepressible grief, which filled all the green woods afar ! Then springing
to their feet at once, they rushed out of the door, in spite of the efforts of their
kind host to detain them; flew down to the rocky rill before described; sought to
pass over to Committee Hill, over whose green peak the white wreaths of smoke
from the recent explosions of gunpowder, were curling paler and fainter, in a
momeut more to melt away in the blue air ; but the rude armed men, who guarded
the brook, repelled those sisters in sorrow, and drove them back to the village,
with insults of unfeeling scorn !

Their agony and suspense may be conceived,—it cannot be described. Real
grief never sits for a portrait. Its language cannot be reported. Its words are
heart-throes, that split into the soul like the point of a wedge.

Their suffering, stifling sobs, and sighs of burning breath grew so piteous to hear,
that Mary Ellis, that blessed angel of the spirit-life, could endure the sight no longer;
but hastily drawing on her Virginia bonnet, she went with fleet steps to the Com¬
mittee,who now had resumed their sitting,—yes, the angel of mercy went alone,
a bashful weak woman, through all that excited crowd, now nothing but a furious
mob, maddened by feverish passion, still more maddened by rum ; learned the truth
from the president himself; and brought back one little honey drop of evanescent
solace for the mourners,—that their dear ones were yet alive. Then, both those
beautiful women, by a sudden involuntary movement, threw their arms arouud the
widow’s neck, and warmed her faded cheeks with kisses and tears.

These facts I had from Mary’s own lips long after ; and she wept while she
told me.

In the meanwhile, a scene of the most thrilling interest was being acted on
Committee-Hill. Richmond was brought back and placed again in the very centre

THE VICTIMS AGAIN ARRESTED.

33

of the Committee, immediately before the president’s chair. His whole appear¬
ance wns frightful. Big round drops,—bead-rolls of despair,—stood upon his
forehead, like those globules of cold water we sometimes see on the brows of dark
rocks, in the hottest days of summer, when the playful children, in their sweet
sympathy with their mother Nature, say,—“ See, see, the stones too like us are
sweating ! ”

His pale face was paler than ever, so pale, that aided by the wonderment of
the imagination, excited by recent, as well as anticipated events, it seemed to me
actually a ghastly livid blue. His eyes were fiery, frenzy-rolling, blood-shot balls,
set in lurid rims of purple. Every limb of his whole body was tremulous with
terror, shaking like the branches of a weak willow, swept by the wind from a
coming storm-cloud.

In his agony the blood gushed from both his nostrils, in two rapid running
streams of crimson. He made several convulsive efforts to speak, but the dim
sound died away in weak gurglings of the windpipe.

At last his voice became articulate, but it was so changed, that his own mother
had she been there would not have recognized the tones of her son. For it was
no longer a human voice, but aloud whisper, so unearthly hoarse, that many started
as with a superstitous thrill of alarm, and vague, mysterious awe.

His first words were, “ For pity’s sake, give me a drink of water! ” They
reminded me of the last and dying request of poor Lucy, the yellow girl, hung by
order of the same Committee, only a few weeks before.

And the reply, in each case, was from the same reverend lips, and similiar in
its pitiless import.

In the latter case, Uncle Buck answered,—‘‘You shall not have a drop of
water, so much as to wet the tip of your little finger, unless you confess all.”

Richmond. —“ Then let me see my wife and child, and I am ready to die.”

Uncle Buck. —“ Confess your guilt and you shall see them. Refuse, and we
will burn you to death in five minutes.”

Richmond. —“ Then, for pity’s sake, let me have a drink of water, and I’ll tell
you all.”

A cup of water was scooped up out of the rill hard by, which he swallowed at
a draught; and then begged for another, and still another, which were given him
to the number of five or six, when more was refused him though still he begged for
more. His thirst was insatiable, as if his entrails were already burning away, in
those crooked, curling flames, he so much feared.

Expectation was now excited almost to insanity, for now came the much-wished
confession.

The secretary, with pen in hand, was ordered to note everything down verbatim ;
and many others drew out their pencils, and tore leaves from their pocket books,
to keep the record of those broken sentences, wrung by fear, from the lips of folly.

He began his confession.—“ I am guilty; nobody else is guilty. I murdered
Wright and his family : I alone did it. This is all I have to cmfess. Now for
God’s sake, let me see my wife and child, and I am ready to die !”

Uncle. Buck. —You know that you are telling a lie. Mrs. Wright says there
were three men concerned in the murder, and now you pretend that you did it
aloue. Beware! tell the truth, or you will not be a live man five minutes longer!”

Richmond. —(With a singular, pale, half smile on his ashy lips, and a sinister
expression of countenance, as if he were meditating some monstrous lie.) —Well,
if 1 must tell on others as well as myself, I will now tell the truth. Two Chero-
kees, the Stars, helped me to commit the murder.

At these words Captain Bean sprung to his feet. Never before had I seen him
lose his cool, collected imperturbation. But now his hand trembled with passion,
and a scowl passed over his brow, and a furious light flashed from his dilated blue
eye, lurid-fierce as the glare of a thunder-cloud, that darkens the heavens at the
summer solstice. But notwithstanding the fever of his excitement, he addressed
the culprit in tones calm, indeed,—but it was a fearful calmness, like that of the
grave—determination and death were there.

“ Richmond ! ” said he, with a look that seemed to rive open the victim’s soul,

3

34

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

for his gaze shrunk from it to the eaith in alarm—“ Richmond ! you have told your
last lie. We know that Barnes and Turner were your aids in the murder. How
dare you, then, try to screen them at the expense of innocent men 1 ”

Ther, turning round to the guards he said, “ Men, let him die this minute! ”
Richmond saw that his last chance was trembling in the balance, and that ceath
was already on one end of the beam, and hastily cried out, “ Then, if ye must
have it so, Barnes and Turner did aid me. They, too, are guilty ! ”

This declaration was greeted with a loud cheer, as if a wonderful discovery
had come to light. Several members of the committee urged him to proceed with
a full detail of the horrible transaction, holding out a delusive hope as an induce¬
ment. They praised his sincerity; stuffed his vanity; and used all the wily arts
of the hypocrite, to urge him onwards with an accusation which afforded them their
only pretext for glutting their revenge, in the blood of foes whom they now fearei
as much as they hated.

Thus at once allured and menaced, Richmond spun out a story which was one
tissue of absurdities and contradictions, implicating not only Barnes and Turner,
but also Jones and Bailey.

When the forced and tortured witness ended his ridiculous story, immediately
the question came up as to what punishment should be awarded the several ac¬
cused, who were unanimously now regarded as proven guilty. Some were strong¬
ly in favor of burning, but the more lenient, backed by Captain Bean, insisted on
hanging, which, after a fiery debate, was carried.

The proposition was then put formally, by the president, “ Shall these men
suffer death ? ” The ayes and noes were called for, and ordered to be registered;
and but one member, James Mitchell, voted in the negative, an act that was never
afterwards either forgotten or forgiven by his brother lynchers.

The victims were then ordered’Snto the presence of the committee, one at a
time, and informed of their fate. Each individual received his sentence with a
manifestation different from all the others. Bailey, with a most piteous voice, beg¬
ged for life, dear life, in tones so mournfully moving, the rocks, had they been
conscious, would have listened and relented. He even bowed down on his knees,
and clasped the feet of the president, still pleading, praying, as if they were gods,
for dear life—that life of the senses, itself, too, divine, even as the life of the soul
Vain petition! He might as well have begged a drop of honey-dew from the hoi
low tooth of a rattle-snake in August, when even its eyes are blinded with the ex
tfess of its own poison, and its bite is deadly as a bolt of thunder.

Jones received his sentence with scorn, curses, and bitter execration, frightful
to hear. Shrieking out his winged words of unutterable hatred, he dared, de¬
nounced, and defied them, one and all, and ended by swearing a horrible oath,
“ that he wouldVhereafter, haunt them, even forever, both on earth and in hell! ”
But Turner and Barnes both preserved a calm dignity—an intrepidity that
showed no symptom of fear. With a countenance mild as a morning without mists,
yet melancholy as the lonely moon at midnight—with a voice clear as the notes of
a dulcimer, but sad, solemn, as the chimes of a funeral bell, they declared their
innocence, without denouncing their foes, and laid bare the baseness of the in¬
trigues of their accusers, in words of moderation seldom heard in the eloquence of
the criminal courts. They alluded to their approaching fate, and to the beloved
ones they were destined to leave behind them; but they uttered no petition for
life, nor sought with sorrowful words to melt into unaccustomed pity hearts that,
in their insane fury, had forgotten the meaning of that celestial word.

Barnes closed his brief remarks by saying, “And uow, gentlemen, I know that
my death is certain ; for your resolution is taken, and you have the power to carry
it into execution. I am conscious my days are numbered. There is now, at least,
no longer any necessity to forbid my dear wife and child the presence of the hus¬
band and father, who is their only friend in the world, and who is so soon doomed
to leave them alone, in a land of strangers and enemies. Ministers of Jesus, I ap
peal to you: shall I be permitted to pass my last moments on earth with those
dearer to me than life! ”

Those words were uttered in a tone so mournfully earnest, with a lingering

THE VICTIMS AGAIN ARRESTED.

35

slowness and solemnity in the last sentences, that some of even that hardened com
mittee shed tears; and the request was unanimously accorded.

But when Turner came to close his remarks, (which, as we have seen, were
pretty much of the same purport as those of his friend,) as he was about to prefer
the same petition, his voice failed him; a cold sweat rained down his face; his
knees smote together; he bowed his head towards the earth, clasped his chained
hands on his brow, and gave way to one long, passionate, wild outburst of incon¬
solable grief.

Then Barnes took up the imploring words which had faltered on the lips of his
friend, and again addressed the committee.

“ He, too, would ask of you the same favor which I thank you for bestowing
on me. He, too, has one he loves, and by whom he is beloved. He would spend
the last moments of his life with the affianced bride of his bosom ! ”

The president answered with emotion, “I see no objection to the request; let
it be so.”

“And my mother! oh, my mother, and dear little sister! ” murmured the heart¬
broken youth, his pallid brow yet bowed between his hands.

“ Let them, too, be admitted,” said the president.

There was an old log-cabin, which hack formerly been a school-house, some fifty
yards distant from the spot where the committee sat. It stood in a thick cluster of
trees, whose green boughs drooped down to the very roof, now in a state of ruin,
but literally covered all over with a net-work of luxuriant creeping vines—a spe¬
cies peculiar to the regions of the Ozark Mountains—vines with great fan-shaped
leaves, and crimson blooms, the most beautiful I ever beheld, round and fiery in
their hue as a star that harbingers the tempest—blooms with five rays, surrounded
by a calyx, not green, but blue as indigo—blooms that come and go, like summer
rainbows, with every rising sun, from earliest spring till latest, frost-breathing au¬
tumn. Here, in this wild spot, picturesque as the abode of fairies, where the inno¬
cent little children were wont to con their lessons, with not unmelodious hum, the
victims were shut up, and ordered to be guarded, by a hundred picked men, until
the day of execution.

That day was set for the following Monday.

It was Saturday Evening. The sun was setting in the west, in a sea of
molten gold, that billowed up, and flashed, and sparkled far around the circular
sweep of the horizon’s bright curve, baptising the old woods with yellowish crim¬
son, and plating the limestone rocks with glorious gilding, and changing the
wreaths of the late white cloud into rippled rubies, and sowing every grass-blade
on the earth, with flamy seeds of diamond and pearl, and coining all nature in that
mint of solar beams, into one infinite heap of glittering wealth, till the world and
blue air, and burning heaven, seemed one immense mine of golden ore, whose veins
were the long mountain ridges, whose inverted bottom, or say rather, bottomless
deep, was the high bend of the ever boundless sky !

And there, in that lingering light, ascending with hurried steps, the precipitous
acclivity of Committee-Hill, moved the two mourners without hope; the two
most beautiful women in the south-west, and the two, of all the most unhappy.
The wife was going to her husband—the Indian maiden to her lover—going to the
last meeting, and the last farewell !

They had to pass directly by the spot where the committee were yet in session,
though on the point of breaking up for the night.

On they came—those two weak women, weak in the force of intellect, weak
in the strength of body ; but omnipotent in love, the only feeling of human
nature that raises us perishing mortals to absolute equality with the gods ! That
gives us the freedom of the celestial spaces, and fixes the soul in the center of
the circle of eternity, immovable as the load-star above the pole of the heavens,
where rolls the axle-tree of all the worlds !

On they came, pale as two lilies loaded with the tears of the morning-still
sadly beautiful in their tears.

As they drew near, the committee became silent. Their irregular hum of
conversation died away to a hushed whisper. Conscience, the bitter recorder

36

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOOTH-WEST.

seemed already shaking in their faces, her scroll written in characters of blood,
under the black seal of a double vengence.

The two twin-sisters in soriow appeared on the point of passing by, with eyes
turned oblique away from that awe-struck committee, as if in horror, when sud¬
denly as it moved by some involuntary and viewless force, which they had no
power to resist, they both at the same time faced round, and slowly approached
the president’s chair. They stood there silent, dumb with unspeakable anguish,
for the space of several minutes, during which time no one spoke, not even in a
whisper. The heart of the old woods was as still as if the angel of death was
brooding there over a solitude of tombs, with his outspread wings of stiff everlast¬
ing darkness !

An evil omen broke the spell that seemed to crowd ages of agony into an
instant of fleeting time. A large raven was seen slowly winging its flight from
the far west, as if coming directly out of the blood-red orb of the setting sun. On
it glided, in the purple air of twilight, high over the little tillage of Boonsbo-
rough,; its glossey plumes showed dark and deep against the sky: od
it came, every now and then giving a slow heavy flap, as if weary of its day’s
wanderings, and then sailing with furled pinions, as if wafted by some ethciial
current, flowing invisible to mortal eyes. Still on it came towards the peaked
cone of Committee-Hill, and settled down in its nest on the limb of a tree, blasted
with the last summer’s lightning. Then it stretched out its neck, and turning its
head in every direction, appeared anxiously watching for some expected object,
with that deep passionate longing, which even animal instincts are capable of feeling
when tinct with a spark of love—the universal sun of all souls alike! The
creature was looking out for the evening wafture of its mate’s wings in the sky.

The result of the bird’s inquiry seemed unsatisfactory ; for it quivered uneasily
in its nest; its dull eyes dilated in their dark sockets; and it uttered a long
mournful croak, arose again on the wing, and flew away swiftly once more to the
west. It too had lost its mate !

All this took place in less time than we have comsumed in describing it.

The sad cry of the raven broke the spell of grief and despair that lay like a
mountain of polar ice, on the hearts and brains of the two mourners. They both
started at once, as if the first peal of the death-knell were already ringing on the
hills. And Flora Barnes threw herself on the ground, laid her child right on the
knees of the president of the committee, clasped her arms around his feet, and
cried. “ Oh ! have mercy, spare my husband. Spare him, kind preacher—spare
him for his child’s sake. 1 swear before Holy God, he is innocent. Pity, and
spare him, for Jesus’ sake.” Aud that wife and mother sobbed like an infant in its
pain.

At that moment, my glance wandered to Rose Quinet, who stood immediately
before me, and I was instantly wonder-struck with the singular expression of the
Quadroon’s countenance. Her lips were compressed tightly between her teeth,
which showed white as two regular rows of snowy ivory. Her dark brows wore
that calm scow! so peculiar to the American aborigines, and which I have never
seen without feeling a momentary thrill of fear.

Her eye had become suddenly free from its tears, and seemed to be swimming
in flakes of fire, with that strange wild look seen only in the Indian race, and which
no painter has hitherto succeeded in transferring to the canvass,—a look which at
once fascinates and defies you ; woos, and yet warns you not to attempt to pierce
the bottomless abyss of those calm orbs, dark as night, and deep as the heart of
the sea.

There was an icy smile on the face of the Indian maiden, yet not a limb moved.
She seemed absolutely stiffened into a stone statue. But her gaze was fixed on
the form of Captain Bean, unwavering, immovable as the fates.

Suddenly, she cried out,—“ Devil, this is thy work ! Die coward,”—and while
the words were on her lip, she snatched a bowie knife, concealed in the folds
of her white apron, made a long leap like the spring of a wild-cat, and aimed with
a fierce blow, the point of the gleaming blade, at Captain Bean’s heart.

But I had been observant of her first gesture, aud having been long familiar

THE VICTIMS AGAIN ARRESTED.

37

with the Indian character, was expecting as much from her previous demeanor;
so when she made her sudden leap, and thrust, I sprang to my feet, and as she
passed directly by me, I caught her uplifted hand, and thus broke the force of the
descending blow, and saved her victim’s life.

She was immediately seized by a dozen men, the knife was wrested from hei
grasp, and her arms tied fast, with hard strong cords.

Then arose a violent debate in the committee, as to what penalty should be
inflicted on the Quadroon, for her attempt at murder. Some advised to hang her
up, like a dog, forthwith. Others preferred giving her a hundred lashes, and send¬
ing her back to the Cherokees. And some pious inquisitors muttered words about
burning !

I was a mere spectator, and as such had no right to express any opinion. In¬
deed there was peril in so doing, provided such opinion chanced to cross the wishes
of the lynchers in their ungovernable fury.

But the emotions of pity I felt for the beautiful being that stood before me, and
my admiration of her love and heroism, overcame all considerations of personal
safety, and I arose, and pleaded for her as if she had been my own sister. I
pleaded her stainless character, and the respectability of her relations. I pleaded
her youth as an excuse, and her love as an apology. I besought them not to forget
in the fever of their passion, that they had already doomed her lover to the gallows.
I prayed them to remember above all things, that she was a woman ; and therefore
the hand lifted to harm her, would be blackened with eternal infamy, and would
never again be permitted to clasp the fingers of an honorable man. I warned them
also to remember.that she was a Cherokee, and a cousin to the principal chief, as
well as a favorite beauty of the whole tribe,—and that they might therefore rest
assured, that any outrage done to her, would be promptly repaid to them and
theirs, with a dreadful compound interest.

My first remarks were received with frowns and sneers ; but when I pointed
out the dangers to themselves that would necessarily result from a violent course,
“ a change came o’er the spirit of their dream” of blood ; and many spoke out,
“ that is true,—that is true.”

Accordingly, the girl was released,—and the two were permitted to go and
join their lovers in confinement.

As the Quadroon was about leaving the committee, she turned and came close
to me, and looking me full in the face, with those black, beamy orbs again swim¬
ming in tears, and with a softened expression of ineffable gratitude, that almost
amounted to worship, she said in a low, sweet, silvery whisper, that made every
nerve in my heart tingle.—“ Stranger, I am thankful; may God bless you for your
kindness to the poor Indian girl.”

Ah, me ! the heart! the heart! the sibyl-book of all the mysteries. The history
of time and eternity lies implicated in its folds of veined flesh !

At that moment, a glimmer as of a faint flash of lightning passed before my
eyes ; I felt my bosom heave with a quick convulsive dilation, as if a soul-volcano
had burst out into sudden action beneath its surface. My blood boiled with cryptic
electricity. And *#***#*j should have been magnetized fatally
and forever by the eyes and voice of the beauteous being, had I not recollected that
she loved another, and that her love was holy as a saint’s in paradise !

And even now; now after years have flown by noiselessly as the fall of dew,
but swiftly as the meteor rides on fire-wings down the steep sky at midnight; now
after 1 have wandered wildly without rest, and far away from those vine-trellised
green woods, where her fair home stands emhossomed amidst stately trees,—aye,
now alone in the busy solitudes of “the great city,” pining pale with melancholy
musitigs for something deir, —the one all divin-, beyond human expression, that
fancy’s fond finger sometimes paints on the hovering mists of the future years, in
hues of rose-water and opaline lustres,—I recur to that scene once moie, and the
mellow melting tones of a low rich voice come stealing in sighs out. of the grave
of the past, like the music of the dreams of my youth, when youth was all one long
bright flush of light, and there was no light on earth or among the stars, but only
love ! The voice seems to say, “ Stranger, I am thankful. God bless you! ”

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

And he has blessed me,—aye, in all the gloom of my sorrow. For what gieatei
blessing has heaven to grant, if even all its “ golden gates” were thrown wide open,
than the recollection of one deed of heroic virtue, or gentle pity, done for one of
fortune’s orphan children, whom all others have forsaken ?

I would not barter the mild odor-breathing memory of that lovely sister's grati¬
tude, for all the goods and chattels in your great world’s peddlar wagon ! Why
shoxild I 1 These come and go like shreds of flying cloud ; but that is embalmed
as a precious relic , and laid away in the heart of hope’s pyramid, whose imperish¬
able base is imbedded in a segment of eternity, and whose proud apex with its
ladder of winding stairs, over-lies the upper deep of yon farthest blue, that ever
was sounded by the ray-line of a man-made telescope !

Well said an ancient sage, who lived long ages before these gross material
latter-day times, when the leaves of the gospel are converted into bank notes and
loaned out at villainous usury ; and gold has dethroned God in the hearts of men ;
and the stock-jobber is the Jupiter tonans of the nations ; and all our white-robed
angels are turned to base yelloic eagles, with metallic wings,—well said that sage
of a people,— we now scorn as barbarians. “ We save nothing only what we give
away ! And may I not add,—we do nothing rightly for ourselves, but the deeds
we do for others.”

Here is the true wealth—here is the only virtue. The tears of sympathy pet¬
rify into priceless pearls. These are the genuine bead-rolls; for every pearl is a
prayer already answered. The light of love crystalizes into stars of glory, that never
shall go down the arch of ages. And every sigh breathed for the sins and the sor
rows of others, is answered by the songs of seraphs in heaven; for charity is the
real Virgin-Mother, that intercedes with the universal Jesus. And he who has
passed through the purgatorial fires of love here, has a deed in fee-simyle to all the
public domain of the celestial latitudes hereafter. One drop of human tenderness
is a purer, deeper baptism than all the waters of the ocea*; for the life, and the
light, and the love are one. Therefore, he who possesseth one possesseth all, and
is himself the heir of all things.

CHAPTER . Y.

THE EXECUTION.

As we related in the last chapter, sentence was passed on the victims on Saturday
evening, and the day of their execution was set for the Monday following. Du¬
ring that Saturday night Cane-Hill presented a most singular, we might say pictu¬
resque appearance. The full, round moon of August shed such floods of brilliancy
on the earth, that one coidd see a piu on the ground, anywhere out of the deep
shadows of the trees. “ The night seemed but the daylight sick, and only a little
paler.” In that chaste, cool radiance the rills shone as if they were made of moon¬
beams condensed into liquid form; and the myriad living springs looked like the
flow of some divine essence running out to waste, and the cascades as sheets of sil¬
ver, poured glittering down from invisible crucibles hidden in the high rocks.

The little village of Boonsborough was crowded with eager thousands, ivho had
come out at the call of rumor, to drink of the wine of strong excitement, supplied
by the new and thick-clustering events. Skins of every color gleamed there, in
the conscious lustre of that mild, melancholy moon. The lily of the white man’s
cheek grew whiter still beueath the ray-showers rained by that pale light. The
6able brows of the Negroes looked jettier, by contrast with the stainless splendor,
that plated, as with a coating of silver, the surface of all things fair. While the

—

THE EXECUTION. 39

red Indians, many of whom were present, might have been mistaken, by a hasty
observer, for statues of copper, as they stood, or sat, or lay at full length upon the
earth, watching every thing, either at rest or in motion, with those dark eyes of
wild, restless fire, that wandered hither and thither, and everywhere in their heads,
which mostly remained changeless, in fixity of position, as speroids of chiseled
stone.

But the small village was room not enough to hold all. And white tents cir¬
cled far round its outskirts. And camp-fires shone red and lurid beneath all the
surrounding groves; and thick vollies of sparks—an ember-rain that fell upwards
—gleamed like millions of lightning-bugs * on the green leaves of the forest oaks.
Hundreds of armed men were on guard during the entire night. In truth, few
eyes were closed in sleep until the morning; for a report was circulated that a
large band of Indians had gathered then on the line, for the purpose of liberating
the doomed men, and slaughtering the whole population of Cane-Hill. Sentinels
were therefore stationed at proper distances, for miles around ; spies lurked in the
thickets, near all the principal roads leading to and from the village; and horse¬
men came and went, at full gallop, from dark till the dawn of day. A stranger
passing by might have supposed that the position, thus in a state of defence, was a
belligerent camp, watching in eager expectancy an hourly attack from some over¬
whelming hostile force.

The watch was most strictly kept up around the romantic cone of Committee-
Hill. Not a human soul was permuted to approach the prison-house, in which
were confined the men condemned, save the members of the committee, until the
next day.

We will not attempt a poor portraiture of the scenes of grief within the rude
walls of that prison-house on that night. There are agonies that no art can fix on
paper or canvas, or cut into lineaments of marble—agonies that are spasms of
swift-shooting torture, from the heart to the brain, and from the brain to the ex-
tremest nerve of the system—when the soul is crucified, transfixed on the pointed
thorns of its own dreadful thoughts, and an infinitude of sorrow, a whole eternity
of wo, are expressed analytically—in a single word, “ bereavement! ” Such ago¬
nies were felt by many broken and breaking hearts, during that long night, in the
lone ruins of that old school-house. Thence the sound of prayers, and cries of bit¬
ter lamentation, and the wailing of female voices, throughout all the grove resound¬
ed afar, startling with mournful clamor the sleepy, gray-eyed owl, that answered
with sad hootings of evil omen.

At length the night was gone, and a day of most gorgeous, divine sunshine suc¬
ceeded—such sunshine—calm, serene, solemn, and hallowed in its hue, as if bright¬
ened by the smiles of unseer, angels—such sunshine as Sunday only yields, as if to
vindicate at once its beautiful consecration by the genius of two religions—by the
idolatry of the old pagans to the adoration of the lord of material light and life, and
by the holy “ worship of sorrow ” to the memory of the Man of God, who is called,
in most fitting phrase, “ the Sun of Righteousness.”

But the pure radiance of that blessed day brought no rest, nor quietude, nor
prayer, to the thousands then assembled at Cane-Hill. Not by the slow chiming
of the Sabbath bells, was the stillness of the wild solitudes broken, but by succes¬
sive peals of the rifle, sharp explosions of musketry, and the sullen roar of an
occasional drum.

Thus that Sunday passed away.

And another night came in her surpassing beauty—the night with her smiling
moon !

And then another morning, cool, clear, glorious. It was the morning of the
day of execution. The little birds uttered from the tree-tops, and the wild turkies
called their mates from the distant hills . and the night-dews dropped down from
all the sprays of the forest, like a showei of shiny pearls.

Oh ! the harmony, the heavenly harm >ny of sisterly nature ! Oh ! the love all
divine, the beauty serenely eternal—the peaceful repose and purity, which wir

• Fireflies—callen lightning-bugs in the backwoods.

L

THE DESPERADOES OP THE SOUTH-WEST.

in

never breaks, nor sin soils, nor any evil passion agitates—that crown her starry fea
tures, beaming only with changeless beatitude, life without the fear of death, and
endless tranquility without sighs, or suffering, or scorching tears!

But alas ! alas! for nature’s twin-brother man ! his body is diseased ; his soul
is poisoned ; his reason is a prisoner; his memory a torture ; his hope despair.
And all, all is the doing of his own suicidal hand. He has broken loose from the
threads of that celestial attraction which is love ; and thus become the insurgent
rebel of the universe. He fights with nature. Fights with his own God given
instincts. Fights with his brothers. Heaps the earth with slaughter, and crimsons
the azure of the ocean with blood !

Thus mournfully musing, on the morning of that fatal day, I sought and
obtained permission to visit the prison-house of the victims.

As I was about entering the door, I was called aside by Jacob Chandler, the
captain of the guard, a good man and true Christian. He informed me, with
tears in his eyes, “ that he had silently observed the conversation and demeanor
of the five convicts, during all the preceding night, and that he was now satisfied
beyond all doubt, of th^ir innocence.”

I then urged him to disclose his opinion, with a full detail of the reason there¬
fore, to the committee.

He shook his head arid remarked, “ that it was no use now. That nothing
could change the resolution of the committee. For their own personal fears were
now a bar against every entreaty. As they could never feel themselves safe,
while one of the men they had outraged so deeply, Aras alive.”

L then left this penitent lyncher, and with a heavy heart entered the honse of
lamentation and woe.

Richmond and Bailey were kneeling in prayer in one comer of the old log
cabin, pale and silent, their lips moved only, but emitted no audible sound.

Jones, during the night had contrived to bribe one of the guards to procure
him a bottle of brandy, and now half drunk, was humming low to himself, (as if
not to disturb his fellow victims,) the first catch of his favorite sonnet,—“ On the
wings of love I’ll fly, from doggeree to doggerie.”

Mournful was the contrast. For in another corner of the house, Barnes was
seated ou a fragment of stone, with his child on his knee, and his dear Flora
beside him, her left hand clasped in his, and her right arm thrown fondly around
bis neck. She seemed then , calmer, even less uuhappy than he. The strong man
was weeping bitterly, as if his heart would break, every now and then kissing his
little boy. And the weak woman, in her infinite tenderness was striving to console
him.

“ Oh ! my dearest,” I heard her say, and her voice sounded like an angel’s
whisper in the ears of a dying saint—“ oh ! my dearest, do not grieve so ; you
know that you are innocent; I know it, and our God will be sure never to forget it.
Let that be our consolation. Those cruel men cannot deprive us of that comfort.
True, it was joy unspeakable for us two to live together here. But death might
have come soon, in the common course of nature. The autumnal fever might
have snatched you away from my arms, My own dear brother thus perished last
fall, and left his wife and two little children alone in the world. Oh ! do not
grieve so, my dearest. You are iunocent, and will go to heeven : you will be in
heaven to-morrow—last night when I fell asleep a few minutes, on your bosom, I
had a dream, oh! such a sweet dream ! I thought that we were sitting in the
porch before our door, you were singing a divine song—‘ the dying saints address
to his soul; ’ I was rocking our baby to sleep, with my eyes fixed on the sky,
which was clustered with stars a thousand limes brighter and thicker than I had
ever seen it before, so that I thought the whole expanse of heaven was one plate
of shilling silver; and then I saw in my dream, a white winged angel with a
Crown of stars on his head, come flying out of the west, and he glided along on the
soft air, without any motion of his wings, till he alighted in the little garden
before our door, close by the honey-suckle bower; and then he called to us, with
the sweetest voice I ever heard, and said, ‘ that he had come to take ns to heaven.'
And there was such a sweet smile on his face, that sboue bright as the morn, and

THE EXECUTION.

41

made so much light around, that I thought I could see the eyes of the little birds,
peeping out af their nests on the branches of the trees, in the woods. Then I
awoke, and you were kissing my lips; and I felt sure that you would go to
heaven. Then do not weep so, dearest husband. We will soon meet again. And
those who meet in heaven, they say, never part any more forever.”

I cannot hope that I have given the precise words of that angel-comforter.
Ah ! no. How feeble are our cold common-places of studied poetry, when placed
beside the music-words of true affection, gushing, winged, and warm, out of the
instinct of the most uneducated heart.

But I have essayed to relate the substance, and believe that I have done so,
truly in every idea stated.

It is impossible to convey, by the pen, the faintest conception of the melan
cholly sweetness of her countenance, or the melting pathos of the tones of her
voice, while thus striving to adraister consolation, which she needed almost as much
herself.

I turned my eyes from this heart-sickning sight, to look for Ellerey Turner
and the Indian maiden. At first L could not discover them, and was beginning to
wonder where they were ; when Jones having finished his song, and observing my
glance wandering around the room, divined the object of its search, and moved
perhaps by my tears, which flowed free as water, arose, approached me, and
pointing with his finger to the chimney-place, said in a whisper, “ there the poor
things are; can’t you save them ? ” I shook my head. The giant ground his
teeth like a mad boar; pulled his bottle from his coat pocket, took a heavy gur¬
gling draught of the sparkling fire-water; sat down again on the door sill and
resumed his favorite song!—“ On the wings of love, See."

The old chimney-place was embowered dense and green in tangled vines,—the
wild creepers of that wild region, that had literally covered the house, inserting
their long slender fingers through every chink and cranny of the decayed walls,
and letting fall their luxuriant tendrils, and broad-leaved foliage, in showers of
profuse vegetation down to the very floor. But the chimney-place, where the
rain and dew had free access, and the bright sun always shone at noon, was liter¬
ally a deep bower of green leaves and blooms, that looked fresh as if they had been
just cut out of the heart of a morning cloud, and dipped in the iris of heaven !

And there, on the old moss-grey hearthstone, sat the pale youth, with the
maiden on his knee, locked in each other’s arms, and half-hidden among the clus¬
tering vines.

They were conversing in low whispers, which none but themselves might hear.
Eyes to eyes, heart to heart, all eye, all heart, their lips almost touching, they
seemed at the moment unconscious that there was any other presence in the uni¬
verse but theirs.

Suddenly boomed on the air the sound of a signal-gun. It was ten o’clock.
There was but one hour till the execution.

Flora Barnes uttered a half-stifled shiiek. Hope so like an angel, but a few
minutes ago lisping consolation, was spreading its hovering wings, now to flee
away and leave her !

At the report of the signal-gun Rose started,' turned her head in the direction
where I was standing iu the middle of the room, gazing on the lovers through my
tears. She instantly recognized me ; whispered a few rapid eager words in her
Ellery’s ears ; then rising from his knee, came forward and addressed me in a low
tone,—“ He wants to see you. For God’s sake go and speak to him.”

Accordingly, I went to the chimney-place, parted the green vines, and sat
down on the hearth-stone beside the poor youth, who warmly clasped my hand,
though for the minute he was so overpowered with emotion as to be unable to
utter a word. Rose again took her seat on his knee.

At length, after a few moments he so far mastered his feelings as to address me
in these words.—Oh ! I shall never forget one of those low silver tones, while
memory has one root living in the dim. distant years that are past!—“ I die an
innocent man. God will hereafter prove my innocence. The real murderers will
be found out: and then 1 want my innocence to be published to all the world.

42

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

Yet I ehall leave behind me no friend on the eaith capable of doing this for me
Those cruel men will not do it. Rose has told me how kindly and ably you pleaded
for her the other evening before that dreadful committee. She said that she was
sure you would grant this last request of a dying man. Will you do so ?

For a moment I hesitated. There was indeed much peril in making such a
promise should it be known. There would be still greater peril in keeping it,
should the contingency ever occur.

While thus pondering, I caught the dark eyes of the beautiful Quadroon fixed
steadily on my face, with a look of such mournful entreaty, so deep, so earnest, as
if her whole heart and soul were uniting in one prayer to me for pity, as if her very
life depended on my answer, that it deprived me almost of the power of volition,
and I hastily exclaimed, “ I will, at all hazards ! ”

The lovers had no time to thank me, for at that instant Captain Bean entered
with a file of bayonets, and ordered the prisoners to get ready, informing them, at
the same time, that the women must remain where they were until after the exe
cution.

I heard no more, but rushed out at the door and hurried down the hill, as if a
fiend had been pursuing me. I would not have witnessed that final farewell for
the world. The screams that wrung in my ears as I fled toward the village, told of
agony unendurable—sorrow for which there was no balm of solace on this side of
the grave.

The streets of Boonsborough were crowded with dense masses of people, now
moving all southwards, toward the gallows. I joined the living stream, and soon
arrived at the place set for the semi judicial murder. It was ono of those singular
hollows, called in that country “swags,” where the earth had sunk down gradually
from the level of the surrounding surface, embracing a circular area of perhaps
one hundred yards, from the brink to the bottom of the hollow, and resembled in
its shape a sparrow’s nest; so that from the centre of the swag the ground rose up,
with its environment of acclivities everywhere around, in the form of an amphi¬
theatre. This spot had been selected for the execution, in order that the assem¬
bled thousands of anxious spectators might have a clear, unobstructed view of the
hideous spectacle—the contortions of the last agony !

The gallows had been erected during the previous night, and stood in the cen
tre of the hollow. It was a young tree of black locust, six inches in diameter, and
twelve feet in height, with a transverse piece, or cross-bar, fixed on the top, about
ten feet long.

One of the committee informed me that they had chosen the black locust for
the gallows-pole because it is the most durable wood in the West—all heart, so to
speak—and that they intended it to stand there, as “ a terror to evil doers, ’ till it
should rot down by the natural action of the elements.

The crowd around the gallows was immense. Such a gathering had never
been seen before in the South-west. The state of excitement amounted to a spe¬
cies of wild mania. The pressure of the superincumbent masses in that natural
amphitheatre, above, on those below, and near the centre, was stifling. The burn¬
ing sun of August seemed to blaze perpendicularly down from the zenith, with a
glare almost insufferable, yet scarcely as hot as the passious of that vast congrega¬
tion of human beings.

Every type of character and condition appeared to be collected there, as if
drawn together by some mysterious spell of enchantment. There wealthy plant¬
ers of the alluvial bottoms of Arkansas river; officers of the army from Fort Gib¬
son, with their glittering epaulettes and supercilious “ strut en militaire hunters
in buckskin trowsers and coonskin caps, from the head waters of “ The Devil’s
Fork,” in the Ozark Mountains ; ladies of every variety of beauty, from the exqui¬
site belle of the village balls down to the flat-nosed daughters of Africa and the
sun—some rustling in gowns that made a silken sound, and some clad in simple
home-spun, woven on the hand-loom ; men of every color, white, red, and “ dark
as night;” N*groes, too, of all hues, from the fair descendant of some remote mu¬
latto, now only with a fractional dip of one-sixteenth, to the genuine child of tor¬
rid Guinea, beneath a Northern sun. still a black-blue.

'

THE EXECUTION.

43

There they all were, the pos:erity of nations on the opposite sides of the globe,
all huddled together, sweating, stewing, groaning, shouting, to see Jive of their
brethren, of the same common humanity, swung up in the air like dogs !

I felt a choking sense of degradation, as I thought how flimsy a wall of parti¬
tion still divides our proudest civilization from the absolute barbarism of savage
life.

It lacked half an hour to eleven, when the marshal of the day and his file of
bayonets arrived at the foot of the gallows to establish arrangements. To effect
this, so as to preserve the necessary order proper to the occasion, the hollow space
was cleared of its dense masses, and the lines of methodical precedence fixed as
follows:

1. The Committee of Thirty, and persons who came in their body, by special
invitation, were arranged in a circle, immediately around the gallows-tree.

2. Twenty paces above them, in the amphitheatre, a chosen band of two hun¬
dred men under arms, formed another circle.

3. Ten paces above, and beyond these, the white spectators stood in another
circle.

4. Five paces from the whites were the Indians, in still another circle.

5. Then came the negroes, and the lowest class of whites and Indians, who
were too shabbily dressed to venture into the more aristocratic front line.

Through all these concentric circles of men, women and children—a broad
lane was left open for the passage of the expected death waggon, with its load of
human victims!

And several hundreds of armed lynchers were stationed around, on higher,
over-looking eminences, in different directions.

Ten minutes before eleven, a singular incident happened—one that made me
feel almost ashamed that I was a man, a being of the same identical nature with
creatures so thoughtlessly cruel, as seemed those, that day around me.

The death waggon, owing to some accident, was late arriving at the gallows.
Already the crowd had become impatient of the long delay, and expectation all so
eager, felt the presence of a chilling fear—a fear that something had happened to
cheat its eyes of “ the ecstatic vision."

Many murmured, “ they are a long time coming ! It must be past the hour !
’Tis strange what keeps them ! ” &c. While others of a more skeptical turn of
mind, said with a sigh of anxiety,—“ I should’nt wonder if they didn’t hang them
after all! ” But these latter were looked upon by the majority of the spectators,
as injidcls ! Infidels are those who differ with us in opinion.

In this state of perturbed feeling, some person arrived on the extreme outer
circle among the negroes, and said that he was just come from the committee, and
that the execution was postponed. This information passed from line to line, and
mouth to mouth, throughout all that great assembly in a few moments, like the
sudden shock from a galvanic battery. And then arose a low whisper, as of a
thousand angry voices half suppressed by fear, which gradually swelled into a loud
hoarse murmur, like the chafing of the sea against a rocky shore, when thunder
mutters from the cloud, and the first breath of the tempest maddens the heaving
wave!

Some groaned—some hissed—some cursed with bitter oaths ; all seemed dis¬
appointed as if a darling, deep-rooted hope had been torn away from their souls,
leaving a painful vacuum unsupplied.

Yet notwithstanding this seeming cruelty, and barbarous thirst for blood, these
people were not naturally hard-hearted—merciless as masses of marble. Far
from it. But the love of excitement had for the time being, absorbed, totally en¬
gulfed in a giddy vortex of heedless passion, all the diviner emotions. It was the
midnight of reason. The wild beast was awake. The angel of the inner life was
sleeping, but to arise in the morning of to-morrow, and bathe the cheek blushing
for its own folly, in tears for the sorrows of others.

At last the death waggon was heard rattling over the brow of the hill to the
northward, and rolled slowly down the long slope towards the gallows.

And there, in that tardy-moving wain, as the ripe sheaves of the “ harvest of

44

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

death,” sat the victims, each on his coffin-lid, with the raven pall above it, and the
snowy shroud around him. They looked like spectres in their winding sheets, so
pale and death like were their faces, even beneath that burning sun ! And their
eyes were seen to wander from the grass of living green, and flowers of golden
hue beneath their feet, to the far off firmamental blue, high-arching over head, with
looks of mournful upbraiding, that they should gaze on its beauty no more!

Paused the melancholy wain, at the foot of the gallows tree ; sharp rolled, from
the height of a neighboring hill, the stunning fire of a whole platoon of rifles;
heavy on the hot air came the thunderous dubbing of a great drum ! Ou the dial
of eternal destiny, the hour of doom to its victims was come!

Uncle Buck kneeled down and prayed Almighty God to pardon those whom he
and his brother executioners would not forgive ! The brother showed no pity to
his brother, and yet dared ask the Universal Father to pity and forgive!

An indescribable sensation came over me. The eyes of Ellerey Turner had
sought me out in the crowd. The memory of that last look of the dying haunts
me yet. It was one of mournful entreaty, solemn as death, deep as eternity. It
seemed to say—■“ Remember your promise, as you would have God himself re¬
member you! ” I saw no more. I turned away my head, resolving not to pollute
my soul with a gaze on the horrors of the last agony ! I felt as if I were already
accessory to a murder !

I heard the order given to the driver, “ Move on! ” I heard the waggon
wheels begin to roll. A smothered choaking sound followed; and all that vast
crowd of human beings swayed to and fro like a grove of reeds on the shores of a
great river, moved by a strong wind.

Then broke, in the distance, from the leafy cone of Committee-Hill, a long
wild wail,—a shrill cry of appalling agony, as of fiery tortures. The farewell cry
of the maiden to her parting lover—of the wife, to the lord of her bosom, leaving
on that lonesome journey, which knows no sweet return l

I felt a deadly heart-sickness. My brain was a wilderness of disjointed thoughts.
I felt my faith in the divinity of man giving way. I was for a moment a sceptic as
to the being of a God. There seemed to be a murderous madness in the sun, and
I looked to see if there were not stains of blood on the blue skies of summer !

Ten minutes elapsed. I heard some one say close beside me,—“ They are
dead now ! ” I turned my eyes involuntarily to the gallows-tree ; but nothing was
there, save five pale corpses swinging in the sun, lifeless though still life-like, the
body remained on the earth for the grave-worm ; but the all-ensouling spirit,—it
they could ndt kill,—that had pitched its flight above the eagle’s,—that had flown
above all the stars !

Then I gazed on the faces of the crowd. The fury and the fever of passionate
excitement were clean gone, and the divine instincts were awake once more.
Tears were in the eyes of the women, and sadness on the men’s faces, and all the
children seemed appalled at the presence of death. And we all,—all the vast
assembly of now mournful spectators gazed on one another, with a grave, gloomy
look, that said,—“ Brother, sister. Alas ! this deed now it is done, was not well
done ! ”

And then I felt that passion is transient, as a bubble of foam on the surface of
the sea of life, that never can ruffle the great deep of the soul. And 1 knew that
the fires of revenge and destruction soon die out, self-consumed; but the light of
the divinity of love within us, is a tongue of flame from the heart’s altar of the
universe! For no one hates the dead : and all that are, must be of the dead.
Therefore no one can hate forever. And so again I had hope for man, and faith
in the goodness of the unknown father! And I knew, that what we misname
death is not deatti but the resurrection. And I said to myself to die is but to be
born again ; at.il the tomb is a temple of apotheosis,—a chamber, into which the
seraph retires to put on its beautiful wings !

For ir universal influx and efflux of being, all is transmuted ; nothing is
lost. The ripples rise and fall; but the ocean never loses one drop. The rainbows
of life come and go, but the everlasting sun, whose “ crimson ray-brush” paints
them all on the passing cloud, shines on, on, forever.

THE EXE :UTION.

45

Ye cannot annihilate the coarsest clod of even soulless matter. Ye may melt
it in your chemical furnaces, or dissipate it into invisible steam, or grind it into
impalpable powder; but never one particle can ye destroy. Ye can lose nothing,
unless you could banish it into an exile, away from the ken of the Omnipresent
Deity.

And is it not so with the soul 1 If the passive be indestructible, can the active
ever die 1

See ye not yonder beautiful little flower; it with the vermillion petals, waving
in tho breeze, on its slender stem of gold ] The butterfly lingers around it, and
the bee drinks honey-dew from its crimson cup. It looks like a sweet little star
just dropped from the zenith. Soon the winds of winter will shake it from its
stem, and the stem too will lose its coating of gold, and fall down, crushed on the
plain, like a withered weed !

Tell me, is it dead? The yellow-haired child deems so; for there is a tear
in her little blue eye, as she gazes where her pretty flower lies, like a dead beauty
on her bier. Weep not bonny maiden.—the fair May-queen of the morning
meadows has not perished. Its electric life has crept down, and gone to sleep in
its root-bed of fibrous feathers; but the first sun of April shall awake it again, and
it shall come forth, in a lovelier body, and richer robes, and its velvet lips shall
again drink the silver-singing rains of the young year, and its starry eye shall greet
the everlasting light once more !

Thus God renews the youth of the world! But he renews it with the incarna¬
tion of the same undying souls.

How then shall matter remain, and mind perish 1

Yon star, that wanders in its ellipsis, tracing a parabola of light on the azure
planetarium , cannot solve the equation of its own bright curve. But my geometry
can solve it; and weigh that star in scales ; and determine the eccentricities of its
orbit for a million years to come. And for millions of millions of ages that celes¬
tial watcher shall look down on •* the new heavens, and new earth,”—for the Creator
is not like a child to build and tear down castles of chrysolite;—and all that while
the science of the eternal mathematics shall hold ?—and shall I, a spirit who can
comprehend all its sublime theorems, and resolve its knottiest problems, and mea¬
sure the sun, and balance all the stars,—shall I the especial favorite of nature and
the Deity, the darling little one of creation, to whom the winds minister song, and
the flowers, odor, and the depths of heaven, light,—I, whose thought wanders
through eternity, and sounds the abysses of all space foaming with innumerable
worlds, and streaming with galaxies, like Auroras in the panorama of an arctic
sky, —say,—shall I die forever and ever, and my Father and my sister Nature still
live on 1

Thus I returned home, musing alone, from that terrible execution, conning
questions which were their own answer; for the love of the human solves its own
riddles. And never can despair blight the heart or the hopes of him, who has
masteied that divine truth, taught by the lips of the “ Great Teacher,”—“ That the
Father of the universe is not loving alone, but love itself; and that all his children
are brothers and sisters.” Such a one carries in his own heart the elixir of immor¬
tality. All nature kisses his cheek with an infinite tenderness; aud “ though he
should wander a solitary pilgrim over the wide world, he shall never find one spot
in city or in solitude, of sunshine or of shade, trivial or unholy ! ”

THE JUSTIFICATION.

The town of Fayetteville is twenty miles east of Cane-Hill. It is situated on
a lofty eminence, or truncated pyramid of hills, overlooking some of the most beau¬
tiful scenery in the world. To the south and west, is an area of undulating prairie,
interwoven with small groves of timber, that look like a nest of islands in the sea,
while blue in the distant back-ground beyond, the smoky peaks of the Ozark
Mountains soar up towards heaven, and feed the fountain-sources of White river,
that meanders eastward, like a winding thread of silver,—when one can catch a

Northward is a long line of low-browed hills covered with fertile fields, and
ornamented with beautiful cottages. It is the seat of justice for W ashington county,
the most populous by much in the state of Arkansas.

It was the middle of the month of September, a little more than two years after
the execution on Cane-Hill, when a dozen armed Indians were seen passing up
the main street of the village from the west, and moving directly to the court-house
which stood in the centre of the public square.

They bore in their midst, two half-breeds of evil aspect, in chains.

A crowd of citizens immediately gathered in the court-house to learn the mean¬
ing of this strange event.

The band of Indians were discovered to be Cherokees; and their leader
inquired for a justice of the peace. One was pointed out to him; and the Indian
then informed them,—“ that the two half-breeds whom they were guarding, and
whom they had brought as prisoners, had confessed themselves to be the murderers
of Wright and his familyand he asked the justice to take charg'e of them, and
have them dealt with, according to law, for their crime.

Accordingly, a court of inquiry was called, and the statements of the Indians
satisfactorily proven, together with many damning evidences of their guilt, before
unsuspected.

These half-breeds were two brothers, by the name of Starr.

It seems, that as five men had been hung for the murder of Wright’s family,
they had concluded that there could be no further danger to them, and had related
to several respectable citizens of their nation, the fact that they, and another brother
then dead, had been the real murderers. In addition, they had given so full a de¬
tail of all the horrid circumstances of barbarity attending the transaction, a detail
so perfectly corresponding with facts before unexplained, that every unprejudiced
mind in the community was thoroughly satisfied of the truth of their voluntary
confession. They were formally committed tq the county jail, to await their trial
at the next term of the circuit court. Yet these wretches at last escaped the justice
due to their enormous crime, while the innocent had already suffered in their stead.

Previously to the sitting of the court, great excitement prevailed in the county.
The Cane-Hill company and their adherents mustered all their forces, and exerted
every energy to oppose the prosecution. They circulated menaces against the In¬
dian witnesses in the Cherokee country, deiouncing vengeance against such a3
should again appear at Fayetteville for the purpose of testifying.

THE JUSTIFICATION.

47

In the meantime, a furious civil war had broken out in the Indian nation, at
tended by the usual massacres, waylaying and private assassinations, so that every
one had enough to do to consult his own personal safety, and no thought to spare
for any other purpose but revenge. And when the circuit court came round, no c
witnesses appeared against the Starrs, and they were discharged on motion.

Thus the guilty went free, and the sinless were lying in their cold graves!
Are therefore the ways of providence unequal ? The guilty went free! Free from
what ? From mere physical death, which can be no real evil, because it is one of
the divine appointments ; an ethereal process in the chemistry of eternal nature;
the crucible where she transmutes her useless metals into gold, with which to inlay
the ceiling of the upper firmament. They went free —free from bodily pain, thus
much, and nothing more. Not free from the pangs of remorse, and the fiery tor¬
tures of memory, where the bloody deeds are scotched with the red-hot iron brand
of shame, as on tablets of immortal marble. Not free from the execration of all
the good, and the very scorn and loathing of all the bad. How then free ? The
thing is impossible, for neither in the regions of fancy or fact is there, or can there
ever be, any punishment conceived equal to the free volition itself, that puts the
hand in motion to perpetrate a crime. Nor hath all the wealth of worlds a supe¬
rior reward to the gift of an innocent death!

Deemest thou not so now, oh! youthful Ellerey—thou “ angel with bright
hair,”—brother of the cloudless blue ? Thou regrettest, when dying, that a blood¬
stain was on thy fair fame. But well didst thou divine, pale prophet as thou wert
then, who art now a sun-sighted seer of the super-stellar sky, well di,dst thou divine
through the hovering mists of death, not unillumined with “ light that never was
on sea, or shore, the consecration,” and the mystic dream, that God himself would
reveal thy innocence; and thou didst commit to me, thy stranger brother, the
charge of publishing it to the world.

1 have striven to keep my pledge. The dim sheets are written. The pool
work is done. Full well I know, that weak are all the words, and faltering,
feeble the lines. For the hand that traced them is unaccustomed to guide the
wayward quill, and the thought that lives in the mind in fire, freezes on the point
of the pen. The blow that is aimed in thunder, falls like a feather on the written
page!

Yet have I done what I could ; I have fulfilled my promise. Had I the power,
I would do more. Were my genius but a tithe of my love, I would rush into the
whirling vortex of the all-devouring years, and snatch these and many more such
wild flowers of my own green woods of the West, from the sweep of the everlast¬
ing gulf-stream, that will soon bury them and the memory of their humble loves,
in the dark leaden surges of the unfathomable sea of time!

Vain dream ! Fantastic shadow of the flitting ideal, which the finger of reality
may not clutch! For how can the forest-boy, with his rude wild utterances, “ wild
as the wild bird and untaught, with spur and bridle undefil’d ; ” the traveller,
whose life has been spent, not in the stately colleges, where studious lore is con¬
ned, but down in the lonely vallies, and high up on the peaks of snowy mountains,
and far out on the broad-breasted billow, which rocked his infant cradle to the
music of the hurricane’s roar, aye, how can he hope to repeat a tale, or tales, which
are not fictions, or even mere records of the past, so much as its resurrection, to
the ears of the city’s gaudy twinklers, that smile in lordly halls ?

Here then let me repose for a day. My weary task is done, not well, but
truly. Bright imagination bodied not forth these pages. I have dug them up out
of my heart. And here I leave them. Should they gain applause, it will not be
for me. If they be crucified on the steel point of the critic’s pitiless pen, I shall
never know it. For to-morrow I shall be away, and when these poor sheets are
issued from the press, I shall be afar, amoi g the orange groves of my own sunny
south.

I have written not for myself, but for my country. In my late travels, I found
vet) violent prejudices existing at the North against, what might very appropriately
be termed, the peradosim of the South. Here, no allowances are made for the
peculiar instutions and social circumstances there. And but a poor appreciation

48

THE DESPERADOES OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

prevails, as to the glorious chivalry, elevated heroism, and exceeding generosi
of the Southern character. I wished to contribute my mite to correct this fallacio
estimate ; to excite some chord of sympathy common to both sections alike ; and
do this, it was necessary to dissipate certain prejudices in relation to the woi
'phases of Southern development. But I could not disguise the truth. It w
therefore only left me to present an accurate detail of occurrences, however obje
tu nable in themselves, and then proceed to account for them, upon the univers
principle of cause and effect.

Unaccustomed to composition, I am conscious that the pencilling is coarse ai
defective. How could it be otherwise, without artistic skill, and the necessa
practice in the author 1

But notwithstanding the many imperfections of these sketches, I would fa
hope, that they might call the attention of our American literary talent to the rii
ore, yet unwrought, in our great national mines, both at the North and Soul
We have the most magnificent country on the face of the earth. Its broad mt
dazzles the imagination. Its long mountain ranges are Titans, before which tl
Alps, and the Appennines, are but dumb infants. Its vallies, continents in tliei
“elves, are rife with immortal legends,—tales of love, and battle, that only requi
the consecration of time, to render them fit subjects for the ecstacy of the poei
dream. And yet our authors mostly write of European story. Here, at our ov
doors is the beautiful virgin of the west, fresh as a dew drop, and fragrant as
wild flower of her own green woods,—and yet, strange infatuation, we persist
wooing the withered wanton of a foreign soil. Oh ! Americans when will ye lea
that ye never can have an American literature, until your theme is America 1

When shall our men of wealth and fashion cease to spend thousands in lot
pilgrimages to the shrines of alien beauty, when our Alleghanies, and Siony Mou
tains, our Hudsons and Mississippis, offer us scenery as fine as any ever brighteni
by the sun ? Then, and not till then, shall we have a poetry worthy of ourselvt
atd the admiration of die world.

tr^A Second number, completing the present work, will appear in a short tim
That part will contain the history of duelling, and the lives of some of the mo
celebrated Desperadoes in the South-west—interspersed with the record of deei
of chivalrous daring, and noble generosity seldom rivalled, and certainly nevi
surpassed in ancient or modern story. Among the characters sketched in tl
second number, will be the matchless Jack Smith T., of Missouri; the notorioi
Captain Rose, of Texas ; and “ Pete Whetstone,” of the Devil’s Fork. Arkansat
while all the incidents are in a high degree coloied with the wild, romant
hues of the west, and the absolute truth of the whole narative is capable of tl
complctest verification, by scores of living witnesses, whose names are alwa;
given.

It will be very fully illustrated, and published at the same price of the preset
number.

”t will be observed that the present number is perfectly complete within itself, having no nece
sary connection with the one to follow.

54

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